Great Bear Lake (Sahtu) is the largest lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada and the fourth largest in North America. The lake is situated on the Arctic Circle between 65 and 67 degrees of northern latitude and between 118 and 123 degrees western longitude, 186 m above sea level.

The lake has a surface area of 31,153 km² and a total volume of 2,236 km³. Its maximum depth is 446 m and its average depth 72 m. The total shoreline is 2,719 km and the total catchment area of the lake is 114,717 km².

The lake empties through the Great Bear River (Sahtu De) into the Mackenzie River. The only community along the lake is Deline.

The Sahtu Dene people took their name from the lake.

Prehistory

Great Bear Lake lies between two major physiographic regions: the Kazan Uplands portion of the Canadian Shield and the Interior Plains. Originally it was part of preglacial valleys that were reshaped by erosional effects of ice during the Pleistocene. Since then, the lake has undergone different changes resulting from rebound following the melting of the ice.

Precambrian rocks of the Canadian Shield form the eastern margin of the McTavish Arm . These rocks of the Precambrian are made up of sedimentary and metamorphic deposits supplemented by igneous intrusions forming dikes and sills.

Climate

Between 1950 and 1974, this climatic data was collected at Port Radium:

See also

• Great Slave Lake

External links

• World Lakes Database
• Prehistory of Great Bear Lake