UNESCO World Heritage Site
Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal (meaning "the rich lake") is in southern Siberia in Russia, located between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, near the city of Irkutsk. It is also known as the "Blue Eye of Siberia". It contains more water than all of the North American Great Lakes combined.
At 1,637 meters (5,370 ft), Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world, and the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume. However, Lake Baikal contains less than one third the amount of water as the Caspian Sea, which is the largest lake in the world. Like Lake Tanganyika, Lake Baikal was formed as an ancient rift valley, having the typical long crescent shape with a surface area of (31,494 km2/12,160 sq mi), less than that of Lake Superior or Lake Victoria. Baikal is home to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, two thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. At more than 25 million years old, it is the oldest lake in the world.
A Russian mini-submarine attempting to set a record for the deepest freshwater dive on July 29, 2008, was originally reported as being successful, but a correction later emerged that reported the MIR I failed to do so, reaching a depth of only 1,580 meters (5,200 ft).
Uvs Nuur Basin
The Uvs Nuur Basin (also Ubsu-Nur Basin) is a fragile mountain endorheic basin, named after Uvs Nuur, a large, shallow and very saline lake in the basin's center. Several smaller lakes are scattered throughout. The Uvs Nuur Basin was nominated for listing as a World Heritage Site in 2003.
Total area of Uvs Nuur drainage basin is 70,000 km2. The most part of it lays in Mongolia (Khövsgöl, Zavkhan and Uvs Provinces), Northern part in Russia (Tuva).
Struve Geodetic Arc
The Struve Geodetic Arc is a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea, through ten countries and over 2,820 km. The chain was established and used by the German-born Russian scientist Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve in the years 1816 to 1855 to establish the exact size and shape of the earth. At that time, the chain passed merely through two countries: Sweden-Norway and the Russian Empire. The Arc's first point is located in Tartu Observatory, where Struve conducted much of his research. In 2005, the chain was inscribed on the World Heritage List.
Measurement of the triangulation chain took place between 1816 and 1855. It comprises 258 main triangles and 265 geodetic vertices. The northernmost point is located near Hammerfest in Norway and the southernmost point near the Black Sea in Ukraine.
