Lake Superior the Soo Locks. Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world in area (if Lakes Michigan and Huron are taken separately; "see Lake Michigan–Huron"), and the third largest in volume, behind Lake Baikal in Siberia and Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. The Caspian Sea, while larger than Lake Superior in both surface area and volume, is brackish; though presently isolated, prehistorically the Caspian has been repeatedly connected to and isolated from the Mediterranean via the Black Sea. Lake Superior has a surface area of , which is approximately the size of South Carolina or Austria. It has a
Lake Michigan–Huron of the hydrologic connectivity through the Straits, some sources have considered the total area and volume of Lake Michigan–Huron when placing this system in a global or regional context. When Lake Michigan–Huron is treated as a single entity, it is the largest freshwater lake by surface area in the world. Notes Further reading Lake Michigan–Huron Lake Michigan–Huron (also Huron–Michigan) is the combined waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, which are joined through the wide, 20-fathom (120 ft; 37 m) deep, open-water Straits of Mackinac. Huron and Michigan are hydrologically a single lake because the flow of water through the