About this item
In Lakes: Their Birth, Life, and Death, John Richard Saylor shows us just how deep our connection to these still waters run in a revealing look at lifegiving bodies of water. Think all lakes are the same? Think again. Saylor leads an illuminating tour of the most fascinating lakes around the world. Whether it's Lake Vostok, located more than two miles beneath the surface of Antarctica, whose water was last exposed to the atmosphere perhaps a million years ago; Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, the world's deepest and oldest lake formed by a rift in the earth's crust; or Lake Nyos, the so-called Killer Lake that exploded in 1986, resulting in hundreds of deaths. Along the way we learn all the many forms that lakes take - how they come to be and how they feed and support ecosystems - and what we stand to lose when lakes vanish.
About the Author
John Richard Saylor, PhD, is a professor of mechanical engineering at Clemson University. He has spent the better part of his career studying phenomena that occur at the interface between air and water. In addition to lakes, his scientific interests include the physics of drops, bubbles, and waves, and he has applied his research to applications such as the use of water sprays and ultrasonics to clean diesel exhaust and methods for using radar to study raindrops. He was a student at the Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop in 2017 and was a literary artist resident at the Herlene Wurlitzer Foundation in 2018. He lives in Clemson, South Carolina
