Western Brook Pond
Encyclopedia
The Western Brook Pond is a Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 fjord
Fjord
Geologically, a fjord is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created in a valley carved by glacial activity.-Formation:A fjord is formed when a glacier cuts a U-shaped valley by abrasion of the surrounding bedrock. Glacial melting is accompanied by rebound of Earth's crust as the ice...

 or lake
Lake
A lake is a body of relatively still fresh or salt water of considerable size, localized in a basin, that is surrounded by land. Lakes are inland and not part of the ocean and therefore are distinct from lagoons, and are larger and deeper than ponds. Lakes can be contrasted with rivers or streams,...

 located in Gros Morne National Park
Gros Morne National Park
Gros Morne National Park is a world heritage site located on the west coast of Newfoundland. At , it is the second largest national park in Atlantic Canada ....

 on the west coast of the island of Newfoundland. It is in the Long Range Mountains
Long Range Mountains
The Long Range Mountains are a series of mountains along the west coast of the Canadian island of Newfoundland. They also form the northernmost section of the Appalachian chain on the eastern seaboard of North America...

, the most northern section of the Appalachian Mountains
Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...

.
It is surrounded by steep rock walls 600 m (1,968.5 ft) high., having been carved from the surrounding plateau by glaciers. After the glaciers melted, the land rebounded and the fjord was cut off from the sea. Salty water
Seawater
Seawater is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% . This means that every kilogram of seawater has approximately of dissolved salts . The average density of seawater at the ocean surface is 1.025 g/ml...

 was eventually flushed from the fjord leaving it fresh
Freshwater
Fresh water is naturally occurring water on the Earth's surface in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, and underground as groundwater in aquifers and underground streams. Fresh water is generally characterized by having low concentrations of dissolved salts and...

. The catchment area
Drainage basin
A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...

 is composed of igneous rock
Igneous rock
Igneous rock is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic rock. Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava...

 with relatively thin soil, so the waters feeding Western Brook Pond are low in nutrients and the lake is classified as ultraoligotrophic. It is fed by Stag Brook at the extreme eastern end of the lake and by numerous waterfalls cascading from the plateau above. One of these, Pissing Mare Falls
Pissing Mare Falls
Pissing Mare Falls are located in Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, Canada. The falls, at 350 metres high, are among the highest in eastern North America and drop from Big Level over Western Brook Pond Fjord into Western Brook Pond....

 at 350 m (1,148.3 ft), is one of the highest in eastern North America.

The lake is accessible by a moderate-easy 3 km (1.9 mi) hiking trail over coastal bogs and low limestone ridges. Two tour boats, one with a capacity of 70 passengers and the other 90 passengers, cruise the lake from June to mid-October. The lake waters are pristine, having had very little impact from human activities. The tour boat operators had to undergo special certification to ensure that their operations would have minimal impact on the environment.

In the early part of the 20th century, a part of the surrounding cliff broke off and fell into the lake, causing a 30 m (98.4 ft) tsunami
Tsunami
A tsunami is a series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water, typically an ocean or a large lake...

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