Largest lakes & reservoirs in by water volume
The estimated volume of water that a lake contains is measured at the lake’s normal elevation. By this measure, the world’s largest freshwater lake is Siberia’s Lake Baikal.Water Volume can be measured in acre-feet, in cubic miles, or in cubic kilometers. One acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre (43,560 square feet) to a depth of one foot. One cubic mile equals 3,379,200 acre-feet. One cubic kilometer equals 810,713 acre-feet. 1 acre-foot is equal to 325,851 US gallons. Siberia’s Lake Baikal contains about 6,276,367,740,000,000 gallons of freshwater – nearly 1 million gallons for every living person on earth.
The other – and more widely used – measure of a lake’s size is the lake’s surface acreage. By that measure, the world’s largest freshwater lake is North America’s Lake Superior.
Note: In the United States, an acre foot is a unit of volume used to refer to large-scale bodies of water. It is defined by the volume of water needed to cover 1 acre of surface area to a depth of 1 foot.
You can find many of the the world’s largest lakes (by water volume) on LakeLubbers. Note: For some lakes, the water volume data is unknown or does not apply, so you may see fewer lakes than the total 2151 articles we have published for lakes.
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Below are lakes within Compared by water volume. This list does not represent all lakes in , only the 2151 lake articles we have published on the LakeLubbers website.
Lake name  |
Water vol. in ac-ft |
Lake description |
|---|---|---|
| Shenango River Lake, PA/OH (Great Lakes Region, PA, Northeast Ohio, Ohio, Pennsylvania, US Mid-Atlantic Region, US Midwest Region, USA) |
29,920 ac-ft | (Also known as Shenango Reservoir) Located mostly in northwestern Pennsylvania between Greenville PA and Sharon PA – and spilling into northeastern Ohio – Shenango River Lake provides f… |
| Dierks Lake, AR (Arkansas, Ouachitas Region, AR, US South Region, USA) |
29,705 ac-ft | Located on the Saline River, Dierks Lake is easy to access off of Highway 70, and with 1,360 acres of water there is plenty of room for boaters and wa… |
| Arcadia Lake, OK (Frontier Country, OK, Oklahoma, US Southwest Region, USA) |
29,705 ac-ft | Arcadia Lake is one of the Southwest’s newest lakes. In the Frontier Country Region of central Oklahoma, forest meets grassland to create a unique are… |
| Lac qui Parle, MN (Minnesota, Southern Minnesota, US Midwest Region, USA) |
29,700 ac-ft | Thousands of feathered creatures gather here, nesting, breeding and chattering about things only birds would know about. For the myriad sounds the bir… |
| Lake Corpus Christi, TX (Gulf Coast Region, TX, Texas, US Southwest Region, USA) |
29,671 ac-ft | Lake Corpus Christi in Texas’s Gulf Coast region is just miles away from the coastline and the big coastal city of Corpus Christi. It is an impoundmen… |
| Honeoye Lake, NY (Finger Lakes Region, NY, New York, US Mid-Atlantic Region, USA) |
29,154 ac-ft | Honeoye Lake, one of New York state’s famous Finger Lakes, is located in beautiful Ontario County. Clean and pristine, this minor Finger Lake is the c… |
| Nimrod Lake, AR (Arkansas, Ouachitas Region, AR, US South Region, USA) |
29,000 ac-ft | (Also known as Lake Nimrod) Arkansas’s State Scenic 7 Byway travels from the timberlands in southern Arkansas at the old oil boom town of El Dorado, and ascends through the mount… |
| Lake Columbia, AR (Arkansas, Timberlands Region, AR, US South Region, USA) |
28,787 ac-ft | The Timberlands Region of Arkansas is home to Lake Columbia, a 2,950 acre reservoir situated northwest of Magnolia the country seat of Columbia County… |
| Faaker See (Austria, Carinthia, Austria) |
28,570 ac-ft | (Also known as Lake Faak, Faak, Faakersee, Faaker Lake, Baska jezero) Lake Faaker is a beautiful alpine lake found in Austria’s southern state of Carinthia (Karnten). Tucked against the steep northern slopes of the Karaw… |
| Little Kennisis Lake (Canada, Ontario, Canada) |
28,221 ac-ft | Little Kennisis Lake is the smaller counterpart to Kennisis Lake, which is one of the largest lakes in the Haliburton Highlands of Ontario, Canada. Li… |
| Jumbo Reservoir, CO (Colorado, Northeast Colorado, US West Region, USA) |
28,178 ac-ft | (Also known as Julesburg Reservoir) Jumbo Reservoir is a 1,200-acre lake located in the northeast corner of Colorado. In the summer of 2006, severe drought drained the reservoir and all… |
| Swinging Bridge Lake, NY (Catskills Region, NY, New York, US Mid-Atlantic Region, USA) |
28,000 ac-ft | (Also known as Swinging Bridge Reservoir) Swinging Bridge Lake is a Catskills lake located in southern Sullivan County, New York and was formed by the damming of the Mongaup River in 1926 for… |