Radok Lake is a

meltwater Meltwater (or melt water) is water released by the melting of snow or ice, including glaciers, glacial ice, tabular icebergs and ice shelf, ice shelves over oceans. Meltwater is often found during early spring (season), spring when snow packs a ...

lake 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 basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from ...

about long and marked by a slender

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 ...

tongue feeding into it from the west, lying south-west of Beaver Lake and south-east of the Aramis Range,

Prince Charles Mountains The Prince Charles Mountains are a major group of mountains in Mac. Robertson Land in Antarctica, including the Athos Range, the Porthos Range, and the Aramis Range. The highest peak is Mount Menzies, with a height of . Other prominent peaks ...

. It was plotted by Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (

ANARE The Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE ) is the historical name for the Australia: Antarctic Program#Australian Antarctic program, Australian Antarctic Program (AAP) administered for Australia by the Australian Antarctic D ...

) from air photos taken by the RAAF Antarctic Flight in 1956. The lake was named for Uwe Radok, Reader (head) of

Meteorology Meteorology is the scientific study of the Earth's atmosphere and short-term atmospheric phenomena (i.e. weather), with a focus on weather forecasting. It has applications in the military, aviation, energy production, transport, agricultur ...

Department at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

, who greatly assisted

Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions The Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE ) is the historical name for the Australia: Antarctic Program#Australian Antarctic program, Australian Antarctic Program (AAP) administered for Australia by the Australian Antarctic D ...

(ANARE)'s glaciological program. With a depth of , Radok Lake is the deepest known surface lake on the Antarctic continent (whereas

Lake Vostok Lake Vostok () is the largest of Antarctica's 675 known subglacial lakes. Lake Vostok is located at the southern Pole of Cold, beneath Russia's Vostok Station under the surface of the central East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is at above mean se ...

is the continent's deepest

subglacial lake A subglacial lake is a lake that is found under a glacier, typically beneath an ice cap or ice sheet. Subglacial lakes form at the boundary between ice and the underlying bedrock, where liquid water can exist above the lower melting point of ic ...

) and the only known

freshwater Fresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids. The term excludes seawater and brackish water, but it does include non-salty mi ...

lake to host a floating ice tongue glacier (the Battye Glacier). It is drained by Pagodroma Gorge in to Beaver Lake. Radok Lake is an

isothermal An isothermal process is a type of thermodynamic process in which the temperature ''T'' of a system remains constant: Δ''T'' = 0. This typically occurs when a system is in contact with an outside thermal reservoir, and a change in the sys ...

and non-stratified Lake, i.e. homogeneous water body. Bainmedart Cove () is a

cove A cove is a small bay or coastal inlet. They usually have narrow, restricted entrances, are often circular or oval, and are often situated within a larger bay. Small, narrow, sheltered bays, inlets, creek (tidal), creeks, or recesses in a coast ...

about long in eastern Radok Lake. The cove leads to the narrow Pagodroma Gorge. The name is a composite one made from the names of C. Bain, A. Medvecky, and J. Dart who spent a month at the cove studying the geology of the lakes area during the ANARE

survey in January–February, 1969. Pagodroma Gorge is a steep-sided

gorge A canyon (; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), gorge or chasm, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tend ...

3 mi long which joins Radok and Beaver Lakes. Photographed from ANARE aircraft in 1956. The gorge was traveled by A. Medvecky, ANARE

geologist A geologist is a scientist who studies the structure, composition, and History of Earth, history of Earth. Geologists incorporate techniques from physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and geography to perform research in the Field research, ...

in January–February, 1969. Named by ANCA after the snow petrels (''Pagodroma nivea'') which nest in the weathered

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

walls of the gorge. Glossopteris Gully () is a steep-sided, narrow gully on the east side of Bainmedart Cove. It was named by ANCA after the ''

Glossopteris ''Glossopteris'' (etymology: from Ancient Greek γλῶσσα (glôssa, " tongue ") + πτερίς (pterís, " fern ")) is the largest and best-known genus of the extinct Permian order of seed plants known as Glossopteridales (also known as Ar ...

'' fossil plant found in the upper part of the gully. Fossil Wood Point () is a point of land between Bainmedart Cove and Radok Lake. It was so named because deposits of fossil wood were found on the point.

External links

Radok Lake
on

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an government agency, agency of the United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geograp ...

website
Radok Lake
on AADC website
Radok Lake
on

SCAR A scar (or scar tissue) is an area of fibrosis, fibrous tissue that replaces normal skin after an injury. Scars result from the biological process of wound repair in the skin, as well as in other Organ (anatomy), organs, and biological tissue, t ...

website
Aerial photos of Radok Lake, Pagodroma Gorge and Beaver Lake

Satellite image

References

{{USGS Lakes of Antarctica Bodies of water of Mac. Robertson Land

Further reading

External links

References