Estonia, the land of lakes

Abstract

Around 4.8% of the territory of Estonia is covered with standing water bodies - in total over 110 000 objects. Natural lakes are one of the smallest group (1 562), exceed by ponds (51 780) and bog pools (45 309) by order of magnitudes. Same time only 51 on of standing water bodies are bigger than 1 000 000 m2 (100 ha), most of those are natural lakes, and only seven are man-made. Distribution of standing water bodies are not spatial even – normally uplands have more lakes and ponds, in the lower part of the country bog pools are more abundant. In Estonian natural lakes are formed during the retreat of the continental ice, are mostly of thermokarstic origin and offering valuable material for paleolimnological reconstructions. During the Holocene, lakes have gone through very different water-level and development stages (varying characteristics of the basin, sedimentation dynamics and ecosystem properties) and as a result, those stages could be considered and compared as of entirely different water bodies. For understanding the current status of the standing water body, we must know the development scenario. In landscape, small water bodies are forming a network, that plays an important role in the human well-being and providing ecosystem services. Collectively, most of the terrestrial-aquatic interface is in small standing water bodies. This zone is considered as one of the most productive habitats. Numerous authors have been demonstrated, that small standing water bodies combined support more freshwater species than rivers or big lakes. Lake Peipsi is 4th largest in Europe, but as its shoreline length is only 800 km, it takes around 23 000 smallest Estonian standing water bodies to exceed this number. That means that it is essential to start valuing small water bodies.