Lake Sevan is the life blood of Armenia. This is the biggest water source in a small landlocked country, so its value as a natural resource cannot be overstated. It provides 90% of the fish consumed by Armenia, as well as a huge portion of the water used for agricultural irrigation and generation of electricity. And if you look at a map of Armenia, it’s probably the first geographic feature that you will notice. Armenia is not a big country—for my American readers, it’s about the size of Maryland—so a lake this big is hard to miss. Exactly how big is it? It’s about 1,900 squares miles, or about 1/6 of Armenia’s total surface area. That makes it a little more than half the size of Lake Erie. And at 312 ft deep, Lake Sevan is actually quite a bit deeper than Lake Erie. Although, it’s a bit less deep these days than it used to be.
