Karakul or Qarokul (Kyrgyz for "black lake", replacing the older Tajik name Siob; Russian: Каракуль; Tajik: Қарокӯл; Uyghur: قاراكۆل, romanized: Qaraköl, Қаракөл; Kyrgyz: Каракөл) is an endorheic lake, 25 km (16 mi) in diameter, located within a 52 km (32 mi) impact crater.

Karakul lies within a circular depression, which has been interpreted as an impact crater with a rim diameter of 52 km (32 mi).

[3] It is larger than the Eltanin impact (2.5 Ma), which has already been suggested as a contributor to the cooling and ice cap formation in the Northern Hemisphere during the late Pliocene.

The lake, with its islands, marshes, wet meadows, peat bogs, and pebbly and sandy plains, has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because it supports significant numbers of the populations of various bird species, either as residents, or as breeding or passage migrants.

These species include bar-headed geese, ruddy shelducks, common mergansers, saker falcons, Himalayan vultures, lesser sand plovers, brown-headed gulls, Tibetan sandgrouse, yellow-billed choughs, Himalayan rubythroats, white-winged redstarts, white-winged snowfinches, rufous-streaked accentors, brown accentors, black-headed mountain finches and Caucasian great rosefinches.