Kurile Lake

Kurile Lake (Russian: Кури́льское о́зеро, romanized: Kuríl'skoye Ózero) is a caldera and crater lake in Kamchatka, Russia. It is also known as Kurilskoye Lake or Kuril Lake. It is part of the Eastern Volcanic Zone of Kamchatka which, together with the Sredinny Range, forms one of the volcanic belts of Kamchatka. These volcanoes form from the subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the Okhotsk Plate and the Asian Plate.

Before the Kurile Lake caldera formed, the Pauzhetka caldera was active during the Pleistocene, and was the origin of the Golygin ignimbrite at 443,000 ± 8,000 years old. The Kurile Lake caldera erupted 41,500 years ago, and another small eruption occurred between 9,000 and 10,000 years ago; then in 6460–6414 BCE, a very large eruption took place, forming the present-day caldera and the Kurile Lake ignimbrite and depositing ash as far as 1,700 kilometres (1,100 mi) away. This eruption has a volume of 140–170 cubic kilometres (34–41 cu mi), making it a VEI-7-class eruption and one of the largest during the Holocene. Subsequently, the volcanoes Diky Greben and Ilinsky grew around the caldera; as of 2024, the most recent eruption from Ilinsky was in 1911. The caldera is filled by a lake with an area of 76 square kilometres (29 sq mi), and a maximum depth of 316 metres (1,037 ft). The largest sockeye salmon stocks in Asia live in the lake.