Lake Skadar on the Balkan Peninsula
Lake Skadar on the Balkan Peninsula. Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features Lake Skadar, the largest lake on the Balkan Peninsula.
Located on the border of Montenegro and Albania, Lake Skadar is a karst lake that receives most of its water from the Morača river.
The surrounding Dinaric Alps are made up of erodible rocks such as limestone.
The swirling dark and light sediments visible in the lake have been transported in from higher elevations through snow melt and mountain runoff.
The concept of the Balkan Peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808,[6] who mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. The term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for Rumelia in the 19th century, the provinces of the Ottoman Empire in Southeast Europe. It had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition, which was further promoted during the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century. The definition of the Balkan Peninsula’s natural borders do not coincide with the technical definition of a peninsula; hence modern geographers reject the idea of a Balkan peninsula, while scholars[of what?] usually discuss the Balkans as a region. The term has acquired a stigmatized and pejorative meaning related
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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer
Image Credit: NASA
