Talk:List of places on land with elevations below sea level

How much land area is below sea level
How much land area does this includ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.177.115.198 (talk • contribs) 13 December 2006

What is counted ?
It seems that only natural places (needs to be near-desert, otherwise it would be water-filled) or places dried with pumps (like in Denmark, Holland) count in this list. Do dug places count if there is open sky at the place? In Sweden the Götatunneln entrance is lower than the here mentioned (pumped) place. -- BIL 11:45, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


 * As this page is related to a geology project, it makes sense that only places which obtained their elevation through geologic processes be included. Locations dug by humans should not (perhaps they need their own list?). We are including places where humans have removed surface water (Netherlands) and not including locations covered by water due to human action (bottom of the once-dry Salton Sea). CAG 104.222.116.185 (talk) 15:27, 30 March 2020 (UTC)


 * I would think that any place that is open to the sky would count. I also think that it should be noted if the location (below sea level) is not naturally occurring. Val42 17:23, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Should Lake Asal and the Afar Depression be counted? Is not Lake Asal the lowest point in the Afar Depression? How can the Afar Depression get two entries? It seems the depth listed for the Afar Depression is it's lowest point in Ethiopia and not of the Afar Depression itself, which contains Lake Asal. This is simply wrong information, unless the list is being built into a list of points below sea level in each country of the world. If that is the case then the entry should be changed to indicate the Afar Depression figure is only the lowest point of the Afar Depression in Ethiopia, and the Lake Asal entry should be updated to indicate it is the lowest point in the Afar Depression. Of course having the two entries opens up a whole can of worms. There are several towns in Death Valley, should each of those towns get an entry? --Celtic hackr (talk) 17:58, 10 June 2011 (UTC)


 * The West German Tagebau Hambach now lies some 300 meters below sea-level. It should be added if artificial "holes" count; it is probably the deepest point of Europe... --Roentgenium111 (talk) 15:54, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * And there is an otherwise unremarkable stone quarry at Swampscott, Massachusetts, USA which, by virtue of being at a low-lying location near the coast, will have an elevation of about -350 feet (-110m) when some additional levels are mined. So over the next few years, this average-sized quarry will become the lowest point in the whole western hemisphere!  There are open-pit mines that are much deeper than this quarry, but I don't know of any that are not at a substantial elevation such that the pit bottom is still well above sea level.  This quarry will hold this record for no more than a decade or two, then the lower levels will be abandoned and allowed to fill with water.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.115.12.254 (talk) 19:35, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

INCONSISTENCY: Should sub-glacial land levels in Antarctica be counted in the main list if they would become covered by water if the glacier melted? Bentley Subglacial Trench is mentioned in the section "Historic and ice-covered areas" as not being eligible for the main list for this reason. But the main list section for "Antarctica" now includes a reference to the canyon under Denman Glacier which would also be flooded if the glacier melted. CAG 104.222.116.185 (talk) 15:27, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Schiphol Airport
You know, not just Schiphol airport, but almost all of the western Netherlands lies below sea level or only just (less than one meter) above. That's just what we build wind mills for! Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 10:22, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * 26 percent of the area of the Netherlands is below NAP, which is the Dutch reference height, equal to the mean level in Amsterdam. (NAP is 2.3 meter higher than the Belgian TAW, which is the mean sea level at low tide in Ostend.) — Adhemar (talk) 08:59, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Elevation of Mumbai
Mumbai is listed on this page. The Mumbai article mentions that it is just above sea level. I think there may be few small areas which are below sea level, but does it qualify to be included in the list? manya (talk) 03:50, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Figures and decimals
Looking through the Europe table many places have an elevation of -13.1 ft. I don't think that's correct. Probably some are -12 ft and some -15 ft, so why be that exact? It's probably true that -4.00 m corresponds to -13.1 ft, but the value is not -4.00 m. So shouldn't we round the foot-figures off a little? Or omit them altogether as long as we don't know the correct figure? Fomalhaut76 (talk) 16:49, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed. There is a lot of this on Wikipedia, where rounded figures in one unit are converted into stupidly precise figures in another. 80.254.147.36 (talk) 13:12, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Presentation Format
Doesn't a list like this really beg to be presented as a table sortable by column (which I've seen that Mediawiki can do, but haven't worked out how to do myself), so that people can sort by depth, region, country ... Aidan Karley (talk) 13:08, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Below sea level
I wonder what the consequences would be if we floded the Dead Sea and or Death Valley. What would evaporation do to the aread regions around these depressions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.244.36.191 (talk) 02:26, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * There are controversial and expensive plans to add sea water to the Dead Sea to restore the old higher sea level. See Dead Sea. --BIL (talk) 12:43, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Rusnė Island
Well, this place in Lithuania is said to be 27 cm below sea level. I queried this, but found that this is a "fact" that every Lithuanian schoolchild learns. The island is a boggy swamp in a river delta, so it is completely incredible that any naturally dry point is actually 27 cm below the surface of the nearby river, but presumably this has something to do with the datum assumed for surveying purposes. This makes one ask: what "sea level" is Everest actually 8000-whateveritis above? Does anyone know? Imaginatorium (talk) 15:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
 * This is a legitimate criticism. The article should use a consistent reference in place of or in addition to an ill-defined "sea level".  The well-known and widely used WGS-84 ellipsoidal model would be my choice.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.85.76 (talk) 19:40, 20 March 2016 (UTC)