The Accumulation of Silica in Lakes

Abstract

AbstractOn the basis of available data on recent and fossil lake sediments with a high content of authigenic silica—diatomite—an attempt is made to identify those factors in the surrounding landscape and in the lake environment that account for the formation of these siliceous sediments. The presence of cause-and-effect relationships and the wide distribution of siliceous lake sediments, both at present and in the geological past, suggest that diatomite lakes can be treated as a distinctive lake type in a lake typology and limnological regionalization previously proposed by the author.