Lakes in Finland

There are 187 888 lakes in Finland. Lake is here defined as a body of standing water larger than 5 ares (500 m²). The number of lakes larger than 1 hectares (10 000 m²) is 56 000. Lake number density is largest north of Lake Inari, sometimes called the Finnish Pond District (Lampi-Suomi). In this area there can be 1 000 lakes within 100 square kilometres. In the Finnish Lake District, a typical value is 40 lakes within 100 square kilometres.

Lakes larger than 1 hectare are mentioned in the lake database. The database is still under development; it is therefore not possible to found all possible data on all lakes. For every lake, the coordinates are given; other data is produced by means of bathymetric maps, which have been made by the environmental administration and its predecessors since the early 1970s. The bathymetric maps now cover an area of more than 12 000 square kilometres.

There are three lakes larger than 1 000 square kilometres in Finland: Saimaa, Inari and Päijänne. The number of lakes larger than 10 square kilometres is 309 and their total area is 21 911 km², which is 65 % of the total lake area in Finland. The total volume of lakes larger than 1 hectare is estimated to be around 235 cubic kilometres. The annual variation of lake area is around 2 350 square kilometres and the annual variation of volume around 39,5 cubic kilometers.

The greatest number of lakes larger than 10 square kilometres within a municipality is 12, in the municipality of Inari, followed by the municipalities of Kuhmo (11), Kuusamo (10) and Posio (7).