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Water is one of the natural abiotic resources that gives many significant roles for human life. It has some important properties for life. We cannot live without water. Therefore, we need to know how to keep the water resource sustain. Water on this Earth is coming from various resources, such as seas, rivers, undergrounds, and lakes.

Lake is a basin on Earth surface that has such large dimension and filled with water. It could be fresh or saline water. Lake is a water resource with beautiful landscape. Indonesia has many lakes with various kinds and types that become tourist attractions. Based on how it is formed, one of the lake types is tectonic lake. Karst lake is another type of lake that you need to know.

Tectonic lake is formed due to the tectonic activity beneath the Earth surface. Tectonic and plate rifting activities produce various kinds of faults. The faults collapse then creating basin on Earth surface. The basin is filled with water from different sources, like rain and river waters. Finally, a tectonic lake does exist.

There are some tectonic lakes in Indonesia. For example Lake Towuti, Lake Takengon, Lake Minanjau, Lake Poso, Lake Singkarak, Lake Tondano, Lake Sentani and Lake Tempe. Indonesia also has some volcanic lakes. Tectonic lake has such unique characteristics that differ it with other lakes. Here are 10 characteristics of tectonic lake.

1. Various kinds of organism

It has fresh water ecosystem and all kinds of animal phylum. There is one creature that lives in fresh water ecosystem, including lake ecosystem; nekton. Nekton is an animal that actively moves with its strong body. The highest level of food chain in tectonic lake ecosystem is predator fish. Lake Sentani even has predator called saw shark, the one and only shark in fresh water ecosystem. Sentani is one of the popular lakes in Papua.

2. Water with high rate of oxygen

If the lake has such unproductive phytoplankton, oxygen can be found on all the water level from top to the bottom. The oxygen in the water lake exists throughout the year. On the other hand, if it has productive phytoplankton, so the oxygen can only be found in profundal zone, a deep zone that is located below the range of sunlight penetration.

3. Water condition depends on the lake depth

A deep basin, as the result of major tectonic activity, creates a deep tectonic lake with clear water. On the contrary, shallow basin produces such turbid water.

4. Insignificant water temperature difference

This is also one of the 10 characteristics of tectonic lake. Tectonic lake has relatively similar water temperature during day and night, especially in the basin area. The sunlight cannot penetrate too deep, therefore, there is no significant water temperature difference between day and night.

5. Deep lake base

Lake is a basin that is filled with water. Even though it’s only a basin, but it has to be deep enough to create a lake. There are 10 largest lakes in the world.

6. Little amount of penetrated sunlight

This is another lake characteristic that has correlation with sunlight. Lake ecosystem is lack of light penetration. It happens because sunlight is normally able to only penetrate few meters below lake surface.

7. Highly impacted by the weather

Lake is located on land and has relatively small area, therefore lake ecosystem is highly impacted by weather and climate. Lake would never run out of water, but the water would increase during rainy season. Furthermore, the fertility rate of the environment around the lake is also impacted by the weather and climate. Lakes in some countries with four seasons may have frozen water during winters.

8. Dominated by algae

Tectonic lake usually has typical flora of algae and seed plants. Moreover, tectonic lake contains plants that have adapted to the fresh water environment. Those plants have some characteristics of:

• Single cell
• Strong body
• Water penetrates into the cell with maximum rate
• High-level plants with taproots
• Low-level plants have similar osmosis pressure as its environment osmosis pressure or isotonic

9. Small wave movement on the surface

Although lake contains steady water, it actually has such wave. However, it’s only small wave and can be found on the lake surface, unlike sea that has wave until some certain depth. The wave of tectonic lake may be caused by wind.

10. Water surface is higher than sea level

Tectonic lake has a unique characteristic, its water surface is higher than sea level. High level area means it’s easier for the basin to get more water. One of those water resources is rain water.

So there are 10 characteristics of tectonic lake. Thanks for reading this article.