Lonar Lake
India · Asia
About
Lonar Lake, also known as Lonar crater, is a saline, soda lake, located near Lonar, 79 km from Buldhana city in Buldhana district, Maharashtra state, India. It has been designated as a National Geological Monument, and is the only crater lake of meteoritic origin in the country.
It has a mean diameter of 1.2 kilometres (3,900 ft), and sits about 137 metres (449 ft) below the crater rim, which is about 1.8 kilometres (5,900 ft) in diameter. Located inside the Deccan Plateau —a massive plain of volcanic basaltic rock created by eruptions some 65 million years ago— it was first supposed to be of volcanic origin. However, further studies concluded that the lake formed inside an impact crater of meteoritic origin from the Pleistocene.
Previously believed to be 52,000 ± 6,000 years old, newer studies suggest an age of 576,000 ± 47,000 years.
It is one of only four known hypervelocity (of 11 km/s or greater) impact craters in basaltic rock anywhere on Earth; the other three impact structures are in southern Brazil.
The Smithsonian Institution, the United States Geological Survey, the Geological Survey of India, the University of Sagar, and the Physical Research Laboratory have conducted extensive studies of the site. Biological nitrogen fixation was discovered in this lake in 2007.
Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.