Kostanay Region
Kostanay Region (; ) is a region of Kazakhstan. Its administrative center is the city of Kostanay. The population of the region is 835,686. The population living in Kostanay is 207,000 which is equivalent to 23% of the region.
Geography
Kosta ...
,
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...
.
Koybagar is a
steppe
In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without closed forests except near rivers and lakes.
Steppe biomes may include:
* the montane grasslands and shrublands biome
* the tropical and subtropica ...
lake of the central sector of the
Turgay Basin
The Turgay Depression, also known as Turgay Basin, Turgay Trough, and Turgay Hollow (; ), is a structural basin in Kazakhstan.Karasu District, Kostanay Region. Karasu village is located west of the lake.
Google Earth
Google Earth is a web mapping, web and computer program created by Google that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satelli ...
The lake is part of the Koibagar-Tyuntyugur Lake System, a
Ramsar site
A Ramsar site is a wetland site designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention,8 ha (O)
*** Permanent 8 ha (P)
*** Seasonal Intermittent < 8 ha(Ts)
**
Koibagar-Tyuntyugur Lake System /ref>
Geography
Koybagar is an
endorheic
An endorheic basin ( ; also endoreic basin and endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water (e.g. rivers and oceans); instead, the water drainage flows into permanent ...
lake lying in an isolated basin encircled by an unbroken wall of clay
cliff
In geography and geology, a cliff or rock face is an area of Rock (geology), rock which has a general angle defined by the vertical, or nearly vertical. Cliffs are formed by the processes of weathering and erosion, with the effect of gravity. ...
s varying in height from to . It is located between the larger Kushmurun lake to the west and the smaller Tyuntyugur to the east. The lake stretches roughly from north to south. The Karasu river flows into the western shore of the lake.
In years of heavy
snowfall
Snow consists of individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes.
It consists of frozen crystalline water througho ...
the lake may reach a surface area of and the water becomes fresh. Usually during the dry season in the summer the lake shrinks, the northern part dries up and the water of the southern part turns
brackish
Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estuari ...
. The lakeshore is largely slightly sloping and low-lying.Коибагар ''
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; , ''BSE'') is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Great Russian Enc ...
'' in 30 vols. — Ch. ed.
A.M. Prokhorov
Alexander Mikhailovich Prokhorov (born Alexander Michael Prochoroff, ; 11 July 1916 – 8 January 2002) was an Australian-born Russian physicist and researcher on lasers and masers, in the former Soviet Union. He shared the Nobel Prize in Ph ...
. - 3rd ed. - M. Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978. (in Russian)
Fauna
The lake is part of the Koybagar-Tyuntyugur lake group. It is a critical site for waterbirds such as the
lesser white-fronted goose
The lesser white-fronted goose (''Anser erythropus'') is a goose closely related to the larger greater white-fronted goose (''A. albifrons''). It breeds in the northernmost Palearctic, but it is a scarce breeder in Europe, with a reintroduction ...
,
red-breasted goose
The red-breasted goose (''Branta ruficollis'') is a brightly marked species of goose in the genus ''Branta'' from Eurasia. It is currently classified as vulnerable species, vulnerable by the IUCN.
Taxonomy and etymology
The red-breasted goose ...
,
glaucous gull
The glaucous gull (''Larus hyperboreus'') is a large gull, the second-largest gull in the world. The genus name is from Latin , which appears to have referred to a gull or other large seabird. The specific name is Latin for "northern" from the A ...
and the
critically endangered
An IUCN Red List critically endangered (CR or sometimes CE) species is one that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. As of December 2023, of t ...
siberian crane
The Siberian crane (''Leucogeranus leucogeranus''), also known as the Siberian white crane or the snow crane, is a bird of the family Gruidae, the crane (bird), cranes. They are distinctive among the cranes: adults are nearly all White, snowy whi ...
.Tyuntyugur-Zhanshura Lake System , Siberian Crane /ref>
There are ten different fish species in the lake, including
perch
Perch is a common name for freshwater fish from the genus ''Perca'', which belongs to the family Percidae of the large order Perciformes. The name comes from , meaning the type species of this genus, the European perch (''P. fluviatilis'') ...
List of lakes of Kazakhstan
Excluding the northernmost districts, Kazakhstan consists of endorheic basins, where rivers flow into one of the numerous lakes. The most important drainage system is known as Yedisu, meaning "seven rivers" in Turkic languages. Below is a list o ...
*
List of Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance
Ramsar sites are protected under by the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands, recognizing the fundamental ecological functions of wetlands and their economic, cultural, scientific, and r ...