Lago Todos los Santos
| Lago Todos los Santos | ||
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| The Lago Todos los Santos to the west. In the background the Osorno. The island of Margarita can be seen in the center of the picture | ||
| Geographical location | Región de los Lagos ( Chile ) | |
| Tributaries | Smaller rivers (Río Negro, Río Blanco, Río Pichi Blanco and various streams from the Andes ) | |
| Drain | Río Petrohué | |
| Places on the shore | none - small settlements (Petrohué in the west and the village of Peulla in the east) | |
| Location close to the shore | Puerto Montt (76 km away), Puerto Varas | |
| Data | ||
| Coordinates | 41 ° 7 '35 " S , 72 ° 17' 55" W | |
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| Altitude above sea level | 189 m | |
| surface | 178.5 | |
| Maximum depth | 337 m | |
| Middle deep | 191 m | |
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particularities |
lies within the Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park |
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Lago Todos los Santos (literally: "All Saints Lake ") is a large still body of water in southern Chile , which is roughly comparable to Lake Maggiore in terms of area, depth and water volume .
The 178 km² large lake is located 20 km east of the significantly larger Lago Llanquihue in the southern Chilean lake district , near the border with Argentina . It is located entirely within the oldest Chilean national park Vicente Pérez Rosales . In addition to the abundant rainfall in this region, some smaller Andean rivers and streams feed the lake; its only outflow is the Río Petrohué .
The western shore of the lake can be reached from Puerto Varas via a road link, the eastern shore via Argentina. Otherwise, there are only hiking trails or roads accessible with off-road vehicles in the vicinity of the lake. In addition to excursions, a scheduled shipping line is maintained on the lake in the summer months.
Lago Todos los Santos is surrounded by steep, forested mountains and three striking volcanoes , the Osorno in the west, the Puntiagudo in the north and the Tronador in the east. The Osorno has recently (2012) increased activity again, the other two have gone out. The lake and the surrounding area lie in the belt of the Valdivian rainforest .
In addition to the name common today, a number of other names were used for the water, among which Lago Esmeralda is the best known. The area has been inhabited for at least 12,000 years. Many of the Mapuche resident there were killed, expelled or enslaved by Spanish immigrants in the early 17th century.
There are some tourist facilities, especially in the towns of Petrohué, Peulla and in the vicinity of the waterfalls of the Río Petrohué, but overall tourism is still developing despite the long existence of the national park. In addition to trekking and kayaking tours, fishing tourism is becoming increasingly important. The Río Petrohué is now considered the best fishing water in Chile, but it owes this exclusively to exposed species, originally not native to the Todos los Santos-Río Petrohué system, whose occurrence has problematic effects on the natural fish fauna of the river and the lake.
Emergence
The lake basin was carved out by an Ice Age glacier , which branched out several times from the Tronador and moved westward to the Pacific Ocean . The Tronador, an extinct volcano on the border with Argentina, is still covered by glaciers. After his retreat, the basin filled with water and formed a very large lake that encompassed the area of today's Llanquihue, Todos los Santos and the surrounding areas. Later volcanic activity, especially of the Osorno, as well as tectonic uplifts separated the two lakes , so that the water surface of Todos los Santos is now over 100 meters above that of Llanquihue.
location
The lake basin extends in an east-west direction for approximately 40 km, in the west the lake is about 10 km wide, in the east it is much narrower. A narrow tongue about 10 km long, the Cayute Fjord, extends to the south . In the middle of the western part is the approximately 100 hectare wooded island of Margarita. The total length of the coast is 125 km. Although the lake only covers a third of the area of Lake Constance, its water volume is almost two thirds due to its great average depth of 34.4 km³. The lake is fed by three smaller rivers and many streams , as well as by the frequent rainfall in the area throughout the year. The total catchment area of all feeders is very large with over 3000 km². The only outflow is the Rio Petrohué, which leaves the lake at the settlement of Petrohué on the west bank and flows into the Reloncaví fjord after a length of not quite 40 km . With an average flow rate of 270 m³ / s, the water flow of the Petrohué is considerable.
climate
The climate is characterized by the proximity of the Pacific Ocean and frequent westerly winds . It is humid, cool and temperate. The weather is hardly influenced from the east, only a few days a year there is a warm, dry, foehn-like east wind, the Puelche. Between April and December it rains almost every day, the months January to March are somewhat drier. Overall, however, at least some rain can be expected on four out of five days. The average amount of precipitation over the water body is about 3000 mm / m². It is much higher in the surrounding mountain areas. The temperature can reach 25 ° C in midsummer, in winter the values rarely fall below the 0 ° C limit. The annual average temperature fluctuates between 11 and 12 ° C. Snow only falls in the lowlands on a few days, but the high elevations are covered with snow during the winter months.
Limnological details
The Lago Todos los Santos is a warm, monomictic and oligotrophic deep water lake . The water quality is very good due to the lack of industry in the entire catchment area, so far moderate tourism and only a few larger farms. The production of phyto- and zooplankton is low. The water renewal interval is four years. Its surface temperature is around 7 ° C in winter and over 15 ° C in summer. The lake never freezes over. Due to the seasonal differences in the intensity of the precipitation and the fact that part of the precipitation falls as snow during the winter months and therefore does not have an immediate effect on runoff, the lake's water level fluctuates seasonally by up to three meters. It is usually lowest in the southern high winter and highest in the first third of summer.
Fish fauna
(This post is limited to describing the ichthyofauna - general information on the fauna and flora of the area should be included in the article National Park Vicente Perez Rosales.)
The fish fauna of Todos los Santos was originally both species and individual poor. This is due on the one hand to the oligotrophic nutrient situation, on the other hand to the specific Chilean conditions, where, due to the shortness of the rivers, whose river systems are also isolated from each other, no species-rich freshwater fish fauna could develop. The Todos only four species of fish were originally in the lake and river system los Santos at home: Perca trucha , a Bar Chart ( Percichtys trucha ), which can reach a length of 40 cm, Bagre ( Trichomycterus sp. Areolatus ?), A trichomycteridae which panchax Peladilla ( Aplochiton taeniatus ), as well as the New World earfish Basilichthys australis , which is endemic to Chile and is called in the Pejerrey region . As its name suggests (Pejerrey = king fish), the latter was particularly valued as a food fish. Salmonids , especially those released for fishing, decimated the populations of all four native species. The peladilla and the pejerrey have not been fished for a long time and may already have disappeared from the lake.
Today, alien species predominate in the lake and river system, such as brown trout , rainbow trout , Atlantic salmon , silver salmon and king salmon . The stock of almost all of these species can only be maintained through regular stocking measures, only the originally North Pacific king salmon has developed self-sustaining populations and new migration traditions since specimens probably escaped or were released from aqua farms in the 1980s.
literature
- Todos los Santos - Archive Extensive information about the lake ( Memento from April 13, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g Todos los Santos ( Memento from April 13, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ Lakes Database (English) ( Memento of the original from February 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Fishbase (English)
- ↑ Doris Soto et al .: Establishment of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) in Pacific basins of southern South America and its potential ecosystem implications . In: Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 80: 81–98, 2007. pdf span / engl.
