The volume of Lake Baikal ranks second in the world among all lakes, after the Caspian Sea. However, the water in the Caspian Sea is salty, and Baikal is filled with fresh water.
Grigory Galaziy wrote in his book “Baikal in Questions and Answers”: “The volume of Baikal water is almost 2 times larger than in Tanganyika Lake; 90 times larger than in the Sea of Azov; 23 times larger than in Ladoga Lake. Baikal has about one-fifth of the world's reserves of surface water (except for glaciers, snowfields and ice of Antarctica, Greenland and other reserves where water can be found in solid state) and more than four-fifths of surface freshwater resources in our country. Thus, Baikal is the largest reservoir of fresh water on the planet. ”