The Most-est Lake

A dark map of Lake Baikal. Titled: 'Lake Baikal' with subtitle: 'Age: oldest (25-30 million years) Depth: deepest (1,642 m) Area: 7th largest (Belgium + 1,033 km2)'. The bathymetry is coloured from dark black at the deepest through a purple-y gray to gray for the shallow regions. A colorbar has the 'dysphotic' and 'aphotic' zones roughly labelled. It spans latitude 52-56 N and longitudes 104-110 E. (approx). A dark, mostly black, subtle hillshade is applied to the surrounding landscape. The lake cuts a roughly diagonal line from the bottom left of the frame to the top right, and it is very narrow compared to its length. Credits at the bottom read: 'by:tlohde / GEBCO Bathymetric Compilation Group 2025 (2025): The GEBCO_2025 Grid - a continuous terrain model for oceans and land at 15 arc-second intervals' — The Most-est Lake: Lake Baikal, a very deep (1,642 m), very old (25-30 million years), very large (31,722 km^2) rift-lake (where the Earth's crust is being torn apart) in Siberia. By volume it contains ~20% of the world's freshwater. This map is intended to emphasise its depth, and that light cannot penetrate its depths. Within the Dysphotic zone (200—1000 m) there is some light, but not enough for photosynthesis; below this lies the Aphotic zone (1000— m), where no light reaches. It is completely dark. This was made for day 28 of the 2025 #30DayMapChallenge: Black

projection	UTM Zone 48N
tools	Python libraries: `rioxarray`, `cartopy` and `matplotlib`; along with Inkscape for title placement
data	GEBCO Bathymetric Compilation Group 2025 (2025): The GEBCO_2025 Grid - a continuous terrain model for oceans and land at 15 arc-second intervals
font	League Spartan by The League of Moveable Type
comments	Not explaining what Dysphotic and Aphotic are on the main map is a big oversight. The colourmap would benefit from being clipping some of the brighter bits and making the whole thing even darker. The matplotlib scalebar doesn't accept (or I couldn't quickly figure out) how to add a `path_effect` to it, so, unlike the rest of the text, it doesn't have a black stroke, but is boxed with a slightly black border. Small detail, but it bugs me.
date	28/11/2025