The Glaswaldsee near the spa town of Bad Rippoldsau-Schapbach in the Central Black Forest in

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lies in a

cirque A (; from the Latin word ) is an amphitheatre-like valley formed by Glacier#Erosion, glacial erosion. Alternative names for this landform are corrie (from , meaning a pot or cauldron) and ; ). A cirque may also be a similarly shaped landform a ...

that is sunk into the steep eastern mountainside of the Lettstädter Höhe. It is part of the nature reserve of the same name that was established in 1960. The tarn formed in a cirque that was carved from the bunter sandstone rock out by a

glacier A glacier (; or ) is a persistent body of dense ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires ...

during the

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and g ...

. Steep banks surround the lake which is up to 11 metres deep and has an area of about 3 hectares. Its diameter varies between 170 and 220 metres. The Glaswaldsee is fed by underground water sources; its surface catchment area, apart from an artificial diversion from the uppermost reaches of the ''Seebach'', only covers about an area of 190 hectares.Catchment measured from LUBW-GEZG. In centuries gone by, the lake was known as the ''Wilder See'' ("Wild Lake") (like the Wildsee at Ruhestein and the Wildsee near Kaltenbronn), but its present name is derived from the former manufacture of glass bottles in the neighbouring villages. Today the surface of the Glaswaldsee is raised by a sandstone wall which used to enable the transportation of timber down river as part of the

timber rafting Timber rafting is a method of transporting felled tree trunks by tying them together to make rafts, which are then drifted or pulled downriver, or across a lake or other body of water. It is arguably, after log driving, the second cheapest mea ...

industry in the valley of the

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. The Glaswaldsee is one of the first lakes of the Black Forest to be trigonometrically surveyed and mapped. In 1655 Landgrave Frederick Rudolph of Fürstenberg-Stühlingen directed the Basle priest, Jakob Mentzinger, to prepare a map of his sovereign territory in the Kinzig valley. To illustrate his approach to the national survey, Mentzinger recorded in the lower part of his map an enlarged view of the Glaswaldsee with the calculations made by him.

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* * {{GeoQuelle, DE-BW, GeoView, ref=nein, especially with the section maps/layers ** by the ''Landesanstalt für Umwelt, Messungen und Naturschutz Baden-Württemberg'' (LUBW) *** "LUBW-FG10": watercourses 1:10,000 *** "LUBW-SG10": waterbodies 1:10,000 *** "LUBW-GEZG": catchment areas Lakes of Baden-Württemberg Tarns of the Black Forest Freudenstadt (district) LGlaswaldsee

See also

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