Today, its feed waters are intercepted by large populations and the lake level is declining rapidly.

BBC: Cores reveal when Dead Sea 'died'

The frozen lake not level but mounded along the shore, as if the waves had turned to ice in the act of falling.

NEWYORKER: Amundsen

While the reason for the phenomenon is unknown, some scientists believe the electrical activity is due to the proximity of the sea-level lake to the Andes.

BBC: Venezuela��s Andean playground

Meanwhile, the water level in Lake Lanier remains close to the record low reached in December.

ECONOMIST: Georgia opens a northern front in its battle with drought

Local aviators and experimental aircraft pilots have been asked to avoid low level flights over Lake Apopka, which can cause the birds to disperse into the danger zone.

CNN: Chemicals killing Florida birds, fish

The lake, which normally is 1 foot above sea level, peaked at 8.6 feet above sea level, said English.

CNN: Storm surge the fatal blow for New Orleans

New Orleans sits mostly below sea level on swampland on the east bank of the Mississippi River and south of Lake Pontchartrain.

CNN: Storm surge the fatal blow for New Orleans

These changes are making water supply and quality more difficult to obtain, affecting runoff and soil moisture, increasing water temperatures, decreasing snowpack and lake and river ice, threatening fish and aquatic species, and allowing saltwater intrusion and sea level rise.

FORBES: Water Risk Threatens Businesses, National Security

The key was not to try to dig a Suez-type of canal, a great sea-level trench from ocean to ocean, but to create a lock-and-lake canal, where the ships are lifted up by a series of locks to a man-made lake, and then they sail across that lake, and then they are set back down on the other side by another series of locks.

FORBES: Fact and Comment