Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Is the Caspian Sea salt water or fresh water?
Originally a land-locked fresh water lake, the Black Sea was flooded with salt water from the Mediterranean Sea during the Holocene. The influx of salt water essentially smothered the fresh water below it because a lack of internal motion and mixing meant that no fresh oxygen reached the deep waters, creating a meromictic body of water. The anoxic environment, which is hostile to many biological organisms that destroy wood in the oxygenated waters, provides an excellent testing site for deep water archaeological survey.
The sea has a surface area of 371,000 km (143,200 sq mi) (not including the detached lagoon of Garabogazköl) and a volume of 78,200 km(18,800 cu mi). It has a salinity of approximately 1.2% (12 g/l), about a third of the salinity of most seawater.
Archeological studies of Gobustan petroglyphs indicate that there once had been dolphins and porpoises, or a certain species of beaked whales and a whaling scene indicates large baleen whales likely being present in Caspian Sea at least until when the Caspian Sea ceased being a part of the ocean system or until the Quaternary or much more recent periods such as until the last glacial period or antiquity. Although the rock art on Kichikdash Mountain is assumed to be of a dolphin or of a beaked whale, it might instead represent the famous beluga sturgeon due to its size (430 cm in length), but fossil records suggest certain ancestors of modern dolphins and whales, such as "Macrokentriodon morani" (bottlenose dolphins) and "Balaenoptera sibbaldina" (blue whales) were presumably larger than their present descendants. From the same artworks, auks, like Brunnich's Guillemot could also have been in the sea as well, and these petroglyphs suggest marine inflow between the current Caspian Sea and the Arctic Ocean or North Sea, or the Black Sea. This is supported by the existences of current endemic, oceanic species such as lagoon cockles which was genetically identified to originate in Caspian/Black Seas regions.
Endorheic lakes are usually in the interior of a landmass, far from an ocean in areas of relatively low rainfall. Their watersheds are often confined by natural geologic land formations such as a mountain range, cutting off water egress to the ocean. The inland water flows into dry watersheds where the water evaporates, leaving a high concentration of minerals and other inflow erosion products. Over time this input of erosion products can cause the endorheic lake to become relatively saline (a "salt lake"). Since the main outflow pathways of these lakes are chiefly through evaporation and seepage, endorheic lakes are usually more sensitive to environmental pollutant inputs than water bodies that have access to oceans, as pollution can be trapped in them and accumulate over time.
The area of Turkey is ; "land:" , "water:" .
Kazakhstan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. Kazakhstan shares borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, and also adjoins a large part of the Caspian Sea. The terrain of Kazakhstan includes flatlands, steppe, taiga, rock canyons, hills, deltas, snow-capped mountains, and deserts. Kazakhstan has an estimated 18.3 million people . Given its large land area, its population density is among the lowest, at less than 6 people per square kilometre (15 people per sq mi). The capital is Astana, where it was moved in 1997 from Almaty, the country's largest city.
Asia is the largest continent on Earth. It covers 9% of the Earth's total surface area (or 30% of its land area), and has the largest coastline, at . Asia is generally defined as comprising the eastern four-fifths of Eurasia. It is located to the east of the Suez Canal and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains (or the Kuma–Manych Depression) and the Caspian and Black Seas. It is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. Asia is subdivided into 48 countries, three of them (Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkey) having part of their land in Europe.
Kazakhstan is located in Central Asia and Eastern Europe at . With an area of about 2,724,800 square kilometers, Kazakhstan is more than twice the combined size of the other four Central Asian states and 60% larger than Alaska. The country borders Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan to the south; Russia to the north; Russia and the Caspian Sea to the west; and China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to the east.
The Caspians ( "Kaspioi", Aramaic: "kspy", "kaspielebiʿ", "kaspkʿ", "Kāspiān") were a people of antiquity who dwelled along the southern and southwestern shores of the Caspian Sea, in the region known as Caspiane. "Caspian" is the English version of the Greek ethnonym "Kaspioi", mentioned twice by Herodotus among the Achaemenid satrapies of Darius and applied by Strabo. The name is not attested in Old Iranian.
Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in its natural form as a crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantities in seawater, where it is the main mineral constituent. The open ocean has about of solids per liter of sea water, a salinity of 3.5%.
There is considerable topographical variation within Kazakhstan. The highest point is the top of the mountain Khan Tengri, on the Kyrgyz border in the Tian Shan range, with an elevation of above sea level; the lowest point is the bottom of the Karagiye depression at below sea level, in the Mangystau province east of the Caspian Sea. Most of the country lies at between above sea level, but Kazakhstan's Caspian shore includes some of the lowest elevations on Earth. The peak Khan Tengri in the Tian Shan Mountains (and on the border with Kyrgyzstan and China) is Kazakhstan highest elevation at ( with ice cap).
Endorheic regions can occur in any climate but are most commonly found in desert locations. In areas where rainfall is higher, riparian erosion will generally carve drainage channels (particularly in times of flood), or cause the water level in the terminal lake to rise until it finds an outlet, breaking the enclosed endorheic hydrological system's geographical barrier and opening it to the surrounding terrain. The Black Sea was likely such a lake, having once been an independent hydrological system before the Mediterranean Sea broke through the terrain separating the two. Lake Bonneville was another such lake, overflowing its basin in the Bonneville flood. The Malheur/Harney lake system in Oregon is normally cut off from drainage to the ocean, but has an outflow channel to the Malheur River that is normally dry, but flows in years of peak precipitation.
Many of the world's largest lakes are located in rift valleys. Lake Baikal in Siberia, a World Heritage Site, lies in an active rift valley. Baikal is both the deepest lake in the world and, with 20% of all of the liquid freshwater on earth, has the greatest volume. Lake Tanganyika, second by both measures, is in the "Albertine Rift", the westernmost arm of the active East African Rift. Lake Superior in North America, the largest freshwater lake by area, lies in the ancient and dormant Midcontinent Rift. The largest subglacial lake, Lake Vostok, may also lie in an ancient rift valley. Lake Nipissing and Lake Timiskaming in Ontario and Quebec, Canada lie inside a rift valley called the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben. Þingvallavatn, Iceland's largest natural lake, is also an example of a rift lake.
East Kazakhstan Region (; , "Vostochno-Kazakhstanskaya oblast") is a region of Kazakhstan. It occupies the easternmost part of Kazakhstan, along both sides of the Irtysh River and Lake Zaysan. Its administrative center is Oskemen (also known as Ust-Kamenogorsk). The region borders Russia in the north and northeast and the People's Republic of China in the south and southeast. The easternmost point of the Oblast is within about 50 kilometres of the westernmost tip of Mongolia; however, Kazakhstan and Mongolia do not share a common border, the two countries being separated by a small part of Russia and China. East Kazakhstan Region borders the Kazakh regions of Pavlodar Region to the north west, Karaganda Region to the west, Almaty Region to the south, Russia's Altai Krai and Altai Republic to the north and China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to the east. Population: 318,800 (as of 4/1/2011) live in the capital. The area has many Russians and Ukrainians; the capital itself has more of those two groups than Kazakhs themselves. The area is 283,300 square kilometers.
Balkhash lies in the deepest part of the vast Balkhash-Alakol depression, which was formed by a sloping trough between mountains of the Alpine orogeny and the older Kazakhstan Block during the Neogene and Quaternary. Rapid erosion of the Tian Shan has meant the depression subsequently filled with sand river sediments in what is geologically a very short time span. The basin is a part of Dzungarian Alatau, which also contains lakes Sasykkol, Alakol and Aibi. These lakes are remnants of an ancient sea which once covered the entire Balkhash-Alakol depression, but was not connected with the Aral–Caspian Depression.
South of the Atlas Mountains is the dry and barren expanse of the Sahara desert, which is the largest sand desert in the world. In places the desert is cut by irregular watercourses called wadis—streams that flow only after rainfalls but are usually dry. The Sahara’s major landforms include ergs, large seas of sand that sometimes form into huge dunes; the hammada, a level rocky plateau without soil or sand; and the reg, a level plain of gravel or small stones. The Sahara covers the southern part of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, and most of Libya. Only two regions of Libya are outside the desert: Tripolitania in the northwest and Cyrenaica in the northeast. Most of Egypt is also desert, with the exception of the Nile River and the irrigated land along its banks. The Nile Valley forms a narrow fertile thread that runs along the length of the country.
The Caspian tern ("Hydroprogne caspia") is a species of tern, with a subcosmopolitan but scattered distribution. Despite its extensive range, it is monotypic of its genus, and has no accepted subspecies. The genus name is from Ancient Greek "hudros", "water", and Latin "progne", "swallow". The specific "caspia" is from Latin and, like the English name, refers to the Caspian Sea.
By the 17th century, Mare Crisium had acquired the name 'Caspian Sea', being labelled as such by Thomas Harriot, Pierre Gassendi and Michael Van Langren. Ewen A. Whitaker speculates that it received this name because it occupies roughly the same position on the Moon's face as does the Caspian Sea on Earth, with respect to maps of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The English astronomer William Gilbert's map of "c".1600 calls it 'Brittania' after Britain.
On average, the Atlantic is the saltiest major ocean; surface water salinity in the open ocean ranges from 33 to 37 parts per thousand (3.3–3.7%) by mass and varies with latitude and season. Evaporation, precipitation, river inflow and sea ice melting influence surface salinity values. Although the lowest salinity values are just north of the equator (because of heavy tropical rainfall), in general the lowest values are in the high latitudes and along coasts where large rivers enter. Maximum salinity values occur at about 25° north and south, in subtropical regions with low rainfall and high evaporation.
Lake Tanganyika is situated within the Albertine Rift, the western branch of the East African Rift, and is confined by the mountainous walls of the valley. It is the largest rift lake in Africa and the second largest lake by volume in the world. It is the deepest lake in Africa and holds the greatest volume of fresh water, accounting for 16% of the world's available fresh water. It extends for in a general north-south direction and averages in width. The lake covers , with a shoreline of , a mean depth of and a maximum depth of (in the northern basin). It holds an estimated .
It is charged with the responsibility of forming Iran's first line of defense in the Gulf of Oman and beyond with the mission of acting as an effective blue-water navy. However, it is generally considered as a conventional green-water navy as it mostly operates at a regional level, in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman but also as far afield as the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and northwest quarter of the Indian Ocean. In July 2016, the Navy said that it would establish a presence in the Atlantic Ocean, of unspecified duration.
The main factors are the advance or recession of the Scandinavian glacier and the isostatic sinking of the landforms due to the weight of ice or isostatic rebound (springing back) when relieved of it. The glacier provides a massive flow of fresh water. Salt water enters from the North Sea through straits when the sea level is high enough to allow reverse flow over the sill. When the straits are above sea level or close to sea level, fresh water will accumulate and a lake forms. Fresh water will accumulate to levels substantially higher than sea level when the sills are substantially above sea level. The release of fresh water from the glaciers depends on climate; the presence or absence of entrances to the ocean depends on land rise and oceanic water level; the latter of course is also affected by the amount of ice held in glaciers worldwide.
The salinity of the bay is about 35%, compared to the Caspian Sea's 1.2%, and 3–4% for the bulk of the world's oceans. Because of the exceptionally high salinity, comparable to the Dead Sea, it has practically no marine vegetation. Large evaporite, mostly salt deposits accumulated at the south shore were harvested by the local population since the 1920s, but in the 1930s manual collection stopped and the industry shifted northwest to its present center near Garabogaz. From the 1950s on, ground water was pumped from levels lower than the bay itself, yielding more valuable types of salts. In 1963 construction began at Garabogaz on a modern plant for increased production of salines, all the year round and independently of natural evaporation. This plant was completed in 1973.
In March 1980, the barrier to the Caspian was blocked, due to concerns evaporation was accelerating a fall in Caspian Sea level, reducing water levels. The resulting "salt bowl" caused widespread problems of blowing salt, reportedly poisoning the soil and causing health problems for hundreds of kilometers downwind to the east. In 1984 the lake was completely dry. In June 1992, when Caspian Sea levels were rising again, the barrier was breached, allowing Caspian water to again refill Garabogazköl. The remnants of the breached dam can be seen in the satellite photo of the inlet, near the Caspian Sea entrance.
Irrigation agriculture has been one of the primary economic mainstays of the lower Kura valley since ancient times. Because of water taken out for irrigation use, up to 20% of the water that formerly flowed in the river no longer reaches the Caspian Sea. Over 70% of the water in the Iori (Gabirry) River, a major tributary of the Kura, is expended before it reaches Lake Mingachevir. Of the of agricultural land in the lower Kura River watershed, , about 31%, are irrigated. Much of the water diverted from the river for irrigation goes to waste because of leakage from the canals, evaporation, poor maintenance, and other causes. Leaking water causes groundwater to rise, in some areas so high that about of land are so waterlogged that they are no longer suitable for agriculture. About of the irrigated lands have a dangerously high salt content because of mineral deposits from irrigation. Of this, are extremely salinated. Irrigation return water, returned to the river by an extensive but outdated drainage system, contributes to severe pollution. Some of this degradation also comes from industrial and municipal wastewater discharge.
The country's fresh water basins and the Caspian Sea account for 97 species of fish of which eight introduced and seven of these have become widespread and over 15 thousand species of invertebrates in Azerbaijan. Most can be found in the Kura River, surrounding lakes, as well as in the Mingechevir reservoir. Most of fish are anadromous or semi-anadromous (the young grow up in salt water and migrate to fresh water to breed after they reach maturity). The most valuable of anadromous fish are salmon, sturgeon, stellate sturgeon and beluga. Aspius, Chalcalburnus and eel are also anadromous fish. Sturgeon meat and caviar are highly valuable. Beside, the water basins of Azerbaijan contain such valuable fish species as bream, sazan, rutilus kutum and others. Such fish species as herring are fished in the Caspian Sea. Due to the construction of a number of hydrotechnical plants on the Kura river after 1959, the regulation of the river water flow, as well as the Caspian water pollution led to the significant reduction in the number of valuable fish species. Three hatcheries (Kuragzi, Alibayramli and Kur experimental sturgeon hatchery) for melioration and fish-farming purposes were launched to restore the fish reserves and to increase the number of fish in species. Azerbaijan's fish-farming establishments and hatcheries account for breeding of 20 million sturgeons, 600 thousand salmons, over 800 thousand. A new hatchery with the capacity of 20 million sturgeons was put in commission in Khyly in 2000.