Ełk Lake (Ełckie, , ; ) is a fresh water lake in the

Masurian Lake District The Masurian Lake District or Masurian Lake Land () is a lake district in northeastern Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpath ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

's Warmia-Mazury Province to the west of the town of

Ełk Ełk is a city in northeastern Poland with 61,677 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the seat of Ełk County in the Warmian–Masurian Voivodeship. It lies on the shore of Ełk Lake, which was formed by a glacier, and is surrounded by extensiv ...

. It has had recent pollution challenges. A larger lake in the lake district to the east of the town of Ełk is Selmęt Wielki. The lake that was created by glacial action during the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

ice age and has a maximum surface area of . Its mean depth is with as a maximum. It is divided into two distinct parts, the northern ("small", ) and southern ("large", ), by a narrows spanned by a bridge. Primarily fed by the Ełk River, a right-bank tributary of the Biebrza River from the south west, the lake discharges into

Lake Sunowo A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a depression (geology), basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land an ...

to its north-west, and the smaller Lake Szarek associated with the village of the same name to its west.

Pollution

From the point of view of its recent

eutrophication Eutrophication is a general term describing a process in which nutrients accumulate in a body of water, resulting in an increased growth of organisms that may deplete the oxygen in the water; ie. the process of too many plants growing on the s ...

, there are three zones of the lake, northern, central (southern), and western. The two beaches in the central zone popular with the tourists visiting Ełk on the lakes east coast are suspected to now be among the primary sources of

microplastics Microplastics are "synthetic solid particles or polymeric matrices, with regular or irregular shape and with size ranging from 1 μm to 5 mm, of either primary or secondary manufacturing origin, which are insoluble in water." Microplastics a ...

lake pollution. However the eastern side of the lake is polluted by sewage and city drainage and the western side by agricultural drainage.

Gallery

File:PL Ełk promenada1.jpg, Promenade File:PL Ełk panorama.jpg, Panorama of the bridge on the lake File:Elk 04.jpg, View of the lake and the city from the west File:Poland Elk View.jpg, View the east bank File:Lyck.JPG, Lake circa 1900

Notes

References

Sources

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Elk Lake Lakes of Poland Lakes of Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship