Uluabat lies fifteen kilometres south of the Sea of Marmara and thirty west of Bursa, east of Mustafakemalpaşa and south of the road to Karacabey, at an elevation of seven metres. It is among the richest lakes in the country for plankton and bottom-dwelling life, for water plants, and for its fish and bird populations. The Ministry of the Environment declared it a Ramsar site in April 1998, and it was taken into the international Living Lakes network at the fourth Expo 2000 conference.
Two streams, the Mustafakemalpaşa and the Kocasu, do most of the feeding. The northern shore is deeply indented, and two peninsulas there carry the settlements of Eskikaraağaç and Gölyazı — the latter still known by its older name, Apolyont.
Eleven islands are scattered across the surface, and they are not decoration: in rough weather they work as breakwaters. They range from Heybeli, a quarter of a hectare, to Halilbey at a hundred and ninety, with Terzioğlu, Manastır, Arif Molla, Şeytan, the greater and lesser Kerevit islands, Bulut and Kız between them. All of them are Jurassic limestone.
The basin is closed in by low Neogene hills to the north and low Jurassic mountains to the south. How it came to be a lake is still argued over. One reading, from Pfannenstiel, treats Uluabat along with Manyas and Sapanca as remnants of an older sea, on geological and fossil evidence. Another, from Artüz and Korkmaz in 1981, explains the same basins as depressions opened by strong subsidence faulting across the stretch that runs from the gulf of Saros through the middle Marmara and the plains of Karacabey and Bursa as far as Adapazarı.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Bursa as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 5.4 °C in January to 24.6 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (99 mm) and lightest in August (18 mm). Long-term means for 1927-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
