Lake
Great Bear Lake
Natural Earth’s outline of Great Bear Lake measures about 30,900 km² (11,900 mi²), the 8th largest of the 104 lakes on sizeversus, and about the same size as Belgium.
100 km
- Great Bear Lake
- Belgium
The numbers
- 30,900km²Area, measured11,900 mi² · Natural Earth outline
- 31,200km²Area, publishedWikidata · agrees within 2%
- 446mGreatest depthaverage about 72.4 m
- 2,236km³VolumeWikidata
- 155mAbove sea levelSurface, Wikidata
The area is measured from the outline drawn above, on the WGS84 ellipsoid; the published figure is shown beside it, and a water body is kept only if the two are within 10%.
What the numbers say about Great Bear Lake
- The Caspian Sea (called a sea or a lake, depending on the definition), the largest of the 104 lakes ranked on sizeversus, is 12.3× the size of Great Bear Lake; Great Bear Lake ranks 8th.
- Great Bear Lake sits between Lake Baikal (31,500 km²) and Lake Malawi (28,800 km²) in the ranking.
- Counted as a country, Great Bear Lake would be larger than 73 of the 212 countries listed on sizeversus and would rank 140th by area, between Guinea-Bissau (32,800 km²) and Belgium (30,700 km²).
- It is larger than 10 of the 51 US states and districts (the biggest of them is Maryland, 25,500 km²) and smaller than 41.
- It is larger than 3 of the 31 provinces and regions of China (the biggest of them is Beijing, 16,300 km²) and smaller than 28.
- The closest Chinese province is Hainan (33,800 km²): Great Bear Lake is 91% of the size of Hainan.
- Wikidata records a greatest depth of 446 m; with its volume that gives an average depth of about 72 m.
- Wikidata records a volume of 2,236 km³. Poured over Belgium (30,700 km²), that water would stand 73 m deep.
- Its surface lies about 155 m above sea level (Wikidata).
- On a standard web map (Web Mercator), a place at 66°N is drawn about 6.1× too large in area, so Great Bear Lake looks bigger there than it is.
- Laid out flat, Great Bear Lake stretches about 249 km north to south and 342 km east to west.
- Wikidata’s published figure of 31,200 km² agrees with our measured 30,900 km², to within 2%.
About the same size as
Countries
On the shore
Natural Earth’s outlines of Canada contain or lie within 4 km of the outline of Great Bear Lake. That is what its geometry says, and it is not a statement about who owns the water or where any border runs in it.
Names
- Great Bear Lakethe name in this page’s titlesource: Wikidata’s English label
- Great Bearalso calledsource: Natural Earth
Where Great Bear Lake ranks
Great Bear Lake is the 8th largest of the 104 lakes on sizeversus, ranked by measured area.
Compare Great Bear Lake
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Sources and method
- Outline
- Natural Earth, 1:10m Lakes + Reservoirs, public domain (Lakes + Reservoirs). Outlines of lakes are drawn at 1:10 million.
- Boundary
- A lake or a sea has no legal boundary of its own. The outline is a cartographic one, and the page says so by showing the measured area beside the published one.
- Area basis
- Measured outline: computed on the WGS84 ellipsoid from the full-detail outline and shown rounded. Published figure: Wikidata (CC0), fetched 2026-11-11. An outline is kept within 10% of the published figure and matched to other places automatically within 5%.
- Depth, volume, height
- As recorded in Wikidata; a volume that cannot be right for the area and depth is left out.
- Shore
- Countries whose Natural Earth outline contains or comes close to the water's outline; computed, not a statement of ownership.
- Drawing
- Each outline is projected with an equal-area projection centred on its own centroid, so areas stay true and two can be laid over each other.
- Data built
- 2026-11-11