Lake Razelm or Lake Razim (, ''Limanul Razelm'') is the name of a large freshwater lagoon on the shores of the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

, south of the

Danube Delta The Danube Delta (, ; , ) is the second largest river delta in Europe, after the Volga Delta, and is the best preserved on the continent. Occurring where the Danube, Danube River empties into the Black Sea, most of the Danube Delta lies in Romania ...

and part of its

World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

. It is the largest liman in Romania. Insula Popina din elico

The name is also sometimes applied to the complex it forms with several other limans and

lagoons A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into '' coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') a ...

. This complex can be separated into two subgroups. The northern subgroup contains

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 ...

Razelm and

Lake Golovița Lake Golovița is part of a complex of lagoons on Romania's Black Sea coast. It is connected to the larger Lake Razelm on the north by a channel wide, to Lake Zmeica on the south by three narrow channels, and separated from the Black Sea's salt w ...

, which are connected by a channel wide, whereas the southern group is made up of

salt lake A salt lake or saline lake is a landlocked body of water that has a concentration of salts (typically sodium chloride) and other dissolved minerals significantly higher than most lakes (often defined as at least three grams of salt per liter). I ...

s. All these lakes cover an area of about , of which is the area of Lake Razelm alone.

Ecology

When the Razelm/Golovița system was closed off from the sea in the late 1970s, this resulted in several changes to the ecological conditions of the system, including a decrease in salinity to almost zero, an increase in refreshment time to over a year, and episodes of

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 ...

. Despite this

environmental degradation Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

, the system remains an important habitat. Three families of

cockles Cockle may refer to: * Cockle (bivalve), an edible, marine bivalve mollusc * ''Lolium temulentum'' (also cockle), an annual plant of the family Poaceae * Berwick cockle, a white-coloured sweet with red stripes * ''Cockle'', a codename for the fo ...

could be found in Romania in the 1960s, and the two that remain are found only in Razelm (albeit at reduced densities). Popina Island at the north end of the lake is an important refuge for many bird species and invertebrates. The recent ecological study suggests that the Razim-Sinoie lagoon system is close to the good ecological status according to the requirements of the

Water Framework Directive The Water Framework Directive (WFD; 2000/60/EC) is an EU directive to establish a framework for the protection of all water bodies (including marine waters up to one nautical mile from shore) by 2015. The WFD establishes a programme and timeta ...

References

Lakes of Romania Saline lakes of Europe Geography of Tulcea County Lagoons of Romania Lagoons of the Black Sea {{Tulcea-geo-stub