Lakes and standing inland waters

Skadar

Lake Skadar (Shkodra, Skadarsko jezero) is the largest lake in the Balkans, on the Montenegro-Albania border: shallow karst cryptodepression, 44 km long, Morača-fed, national park since 1983, Ramsar site, declining water levels.

Smoothstone Lake

Smoothstone Lake is a large, lightly accessed lake in central Saskatchewan, Canada, about 68,959 acres with a 96 km shoreline, a provincial recreation site, and a year-round fishing and hunting lodge.

Soda lake

Soda lake (alkaline lake): a closed-basin lake dominated by sodium carbonates, typically pH 9–12 and often hypersaline. Examples include Lake Van, Mono Lake, and Lake Magadi; habitats of haloalkaliphilic microbes and sources of soda ash.

Sørvágsvatn

Sørvágsvatn, also called Leitisvatn or Vatnið, is the largest lake of the Faroe Islands (3.4 km²) on Vágar, famous for the Trælanípa-cliff optical illusion that makes it appear to float above the ocean despite sitting only about 30 m above sea level, draining via Bøsdalafossur.

South Aral Sea

South Aral Sea (Large Aral), the Uzbekistan portion of the Aral Sea, split from the North Aral Sea by 1987 and nearly dried after Soviet diversion of the Amu Darya; its eastern basin is desiccated, leaving a hypersaline western strip.

Spirit Lake (Washington)

Spirit Lake (Washington) is a lake about 4 miles northeast of Mount St. Helens, dammed by the 1980 debris avalanche and since 1985 drained by the 8,500-ft Spirit Lake outlet tunnel.

Stanwell-Fletcher

Stanwell-Fletcher Lake, Somerset Island, Nunavut, Canada: 339 km2 cold monomictic polar lake in the Boothia Arch, draining via Union River to Creswell Bay, home to Arctic char.

Storavan

Storavan (Buovđđahávva) is a large regulated lake, about 185 km², in Lapland, Norrbotten, Sweden, third largest in the Skellefteälven system after Uddjaure and Hornavan; with Uddjaur it forms a 780 million m³ hydropower reservoir regulated since the 1930s, with Bergnäs power station at its dam.

Storsjön

Storsjön is a large, regulated lake in Jämtland, Sweden. It is the fifth largest by surface area and acts as a reservoir for the Indalsälven hydropower system.

Storuman

Storuman (Ume Sami Stuora Ubmeje, Lusspie) is a regulated lake in southern Lappland, Sweden, the Umeälven's largest hydropower reservoir, and the name of the Västerbotten municipality and Inlandsbanan railway town beside it.

Straits of Mackinac

The Straits of Mackinac are the open-water channel connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, making them hydrologically one lake, the world's largest by surface area; site of the Mackinac Bridge, colonial Michilimackinac, and the disputed Enbridge Line 5 pipeline.

Stuart

Stuart Lake (Nak'al Bun) is a 90 km long lake in north-central British Columbia near Fort St. James, named for fur trader John Stuart, draining via the Stuart River to the Nechako, with threatened sockeye runs and white sturgeon critical habitat.

Szczecin Lagoon

Szczecin Lagoon (Zalew Szczeciński, Oder Lagoon) is a 687 km² shallow oligohaline lagoon on the Poland–Germany border at the Oder mouth, connected to the Baltic by the Świna, Peene, and Dziwna straits and heavily eutrophied.

Tai

Tai (太湖, Taihu, Lake Tai) is China's third-largest freshwater lake, a shallow 2,338 km2 lake in the Yangtze delta spanning Jiangsu and Zhejiang, known for eutrophication, cyanobacteria blooms, and the 2007 Wuxi water crisis.

Tanganyika

Tanganyika names Lake Tanganyika, Africa's deepest and longest lake, shared by Zambia, Tanzania, Burundi, and the DRC; about 671 km long, 1,470 m deep, holding ~17% of the world's liquid freshwater, plus the Zambian Ramsar site of that name.

Tangra Yumco

Tangra Yumco (当惹雍错), a large brackish terminal lake in Nyima County, Nagqu, Tibet, at about 4,540 m elevation; deepest lake on the Tibetan Plateau (230 m), Bon sacred lake, with shorelines 185 m above the present level.

Tathlina

Tathlina Lake, a large shallow 573 km² lake in the southern Northwest Territories, Canada, on the Kakisa River; known for its declining commercial walleye fishery and Ka'a'gee Tu First Nation importance.

Taupō (lake)

Lake Taupō (Te Taupō-nui-a-Tia), New Zealand's largest lake, about 620 km², fills the caldera of the Taupō volcano formed by the Ōruanui eruption roughly 25,500 years ago; drains via the Waikato River.

Taymyr

Lake Taymyr (Ozero Taymyr, Taimyr) is the largest lake of the Russian Arctic, a shallow 4,560 km2 tundra lake on the Taymyr Peninsula, ice-covered over nine months yearly, with the Verkhnyaya Taymyra inflow and Nizhnyaya Taymyra outflow.

Tehek

Tehek Lake is a lake in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut, Canada, near Amarulik and Third Portage lakes, mapped by the Geological Survey of Canada for Woodburn Lake group geology and monitored by satellite altimetry.

Tengiz

Tengiz, or Lake Tengiz (Kazakh: Теңіз, meaning "sea"), is a large salt lake with no outlet in north-central Kazakhstan, a Ramsar and World Heritage site hosting the northernmost greater flamingo colony.

Teshekpuk

Teshekpuk Lake, meaning "the largest lake of all," is an 850 km² freshwater lake in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve; largest in the state's Arctic, key molting site for brant and calving ground of the Teshekpuk caribou herd.

Teslin (lake)

Teslin Lake, from Inland Tlingit tás ten ("long sewing sinew"), is a 148 km long narrow lake flowing from British Columbia into southeast Yukon, part of the Yukon River drainage, with an oligotrophic lake trout fishery and monitored water levels since 1944.

Tonlé Sap

Tonle Sap (Boeng Tonle Sap), Cambodia's great fluvial lake, largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia; reverses Mekong flow seasonally, expanding from 2,500 to over 16,000 km2 and sustaining a top global inland fishery.

Topozero

Topozero (Топозеро; Finnish: Topasjärvi) is a large freshwater lake in northern Karelia, Russia, in the Kovda River basin and part of the Kumskoye Reservoir since 1966.

Torneträsk

Torneträsk (Duortnosjávri), Sweden's sixth largest lake and largest unregulated lake, a 331 km2 subarctic mountain lake in Norrbotten near Abisko; outlet Tarrakoski starts the protected Torneälven; max depth 168 m; ice records since 1873.

Tsomoriri

Tsomoriri (Tso Moriri), a fresh-to-brackish lake at 4,595 m in Ladakh's Changthang Plateau; Ramsar site since 2002, Black-necked Crane breeding ground, largest Trans-Himalayan lake wholly in India.

Tulare Lake

Tulare Lake, called Pa'ashi by the Yokuts, was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River in California's San Joaquin Valley, drained by the 1920s for agriculture; it reemerges in wet years such as 2023, and its groundwater subbasin entered SGMA probation in 2024.

Tuz

Tuz (Tuz Gölü, Salt Lake), Turkey's second-largest lake, a shallow hypersaline endorheic lake in Central Anatolia's Konya basin; 32.4% salt, 70% of Turkey's salt, major flamingo colony, SEPA since 2000, UNESCO tentative list, drying since 2000.