Featuring satellite imagery from Google Earth, this guide provides a unique, highly visual tour of lakes across the globe, from the simple to the complex, the nearby to the remote. Clear text accompanies each image and identifies important aspects of each lake along with such information as its coordinates, scale, and altitudes, if relevant. From the many aspects of lake science including water budgets, temperature regimes, mixing types, biology/ecology, and chemistry, the book concentrates on the genesis of lakes and other closed forms containing water, moisture/swamps or minerals. Its organisation follows different forms of lake origin (often connected to the question of age) such as extra-terrestrial meteor impacts, structural depressions by tectonic activity, patterning of joints or faults, volcanic origin, or the forming influence of glacier ice, subterranean permafrost, littoral processes, running water, wind, and solution of rocks (karst forms). Coverage also deals with temporal variations in lake existence within the context of climate change in the past and the future. In addition, special chapters are devoted to saline (or salt) lakes, and - in their evaporated forms - to saltpans. Providing essential information at a glance, this guide will be help both specialists and general readers better understand the world's lakes as well as see them in a new perspective.

Anja M. Scheffers is Professor of Geoscience, Southern Cross University, School of Environment, Science and Engineering, NSW, Australia. She has a M.Sc. from University of Bonn, a PhD from University of Duisburg-Essen, and a Habilitation (Sc.D.) from the University of Duisburg-Essen. She authored and co-authored more than 100 publications with main emphasis on the Physical Geography of coasts (palaeotsunamis and palaeostorms, general palaeoclimatology, sea level histories, Quaternary geochronology based on ESR and U-series dating, and multi-proxy study of corals), based on fieldwork in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, SE-Asia, Australia and Ireland. Anja Scheffers was awarded the prestigious ARC (Australian Research Council) Future Fellowship 2009-2013. Dieter H. Kelletat is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany) and currently Lecturer at Cologne University. He has a Dipl.-Geogr. and PhD from Göttingen University and Habilitation (Sc.D.) from Technical University of Berlin. He was also Associate Professor at the University of Braunschweig and Professor at the University of Hannover. His expertise is Physical Geography with emphasis on the geomorphology of coasts, high mountains, glaciers and climate change. He authored, co-authored and edited more than 250 scientific publications including textbooks and books for a wider audience, based on fieldwork on five continents from the tropics to the Arctic.