Natron lake in tanzania8/12/2023 There are a number of campsites near the Lake Natron, which is also the base for trekking mount Ol Doinyo Lengai. Walking around the Lake Natron and to the streams and waterfalls along the nearby escarpment make for am excellent adventure off the beaten track. This has allowed the Lake Natron to concentrate into a caustic alkaline brine The lavas have significant amounts of carbonate but lowest calcium and magnesium levels. The alkalinity of the lake can reach a pH of greater than 12.1, the surrounding bedrock is composed of alkaline and the sodium – dominated trachyte lavas that were laid down during the Pleistocene period. High levels of evaporation have left behind Lake Latron (sodium carbonate decahydrate) and trona (sodium sesquicarbonate dihydrate). The lake and its ecosystem provides a source of livelihoods to the Masai communities. Food is plentiful, nesting sites abound – and most importantly, the Lake Natron is isolated and undisturbed. It’s the most important breeding site for Lesser Flamingos in the world.Įast Africa has millions of Lesser Flamingos and this numbers representing three-quarters of the whole world population and most of them are hatched at the Lake Natron. Nearest towns to Lake Natron are Arusha in Tanzania and in Kenya is Magadi town. The Lake Natron is located Tanzania at the northern circuit. Let’s hope his images are not a portent of what’s to become of this spectacular place.Lake Natron is a soda lake at the base of the active volcano of Ol Donyo Lengai, area around the Lake is often explained as having a desolate and almost lunar beauty. From the look of Brandt’s pictures, the place is already dead. The spectacle the Lesser Flamingo puts on at Lake Natron may soon disappear. The human activity may directly drive off the skittish birds, not to mention the ways both projects might alter the ecology of the water and mud the flamingos have come to rely upon. The Gelai volcano (9,652 feet 2,942 m) is at the lake’s. The lake’s warm water is an ideal breeding ground for the Rift Valley flamingos. The lake is 35 miles (56 km) long and 15 miles (24 km) wide and contains salt, soda, and magnesite deposits. A dam and a soda ash extraction factory will dramatically alter the ecology of the lake. Lake Natron, lake in northern Tanzania on the border with Kenya, lying in the East African Rift System, 70 miles (113 km) northwest of Arusha. Lake Natron is such an attractive mating site for flamingos because the water stays low enough to prevent nest flooding but remains high enough that there’s a barrier between predators and the conical nests the birds build. That mating ground is now under threat from industry. For the Lesser Flamingo, Lake Natron is a singular, prime breeding site. In some ways, Brandt’s photos mask the importance of Lake Natron to life in and around the body of water. Those that fall in and perish are exceptionally preserved by the salts that make the lake so unique, but the lake’s surface isn’t an aquatic equivalent of the Medusa’s gaze. And for those animals that do become interred here, animals don’t immediately die and turn to stone upon touching the lake. Lake Natron is a hotspot for beautiful life. BBC natural history unit programs and even a Disney documentary have featured the flamingos who congregate in this picturesque place. The importance of Lake Natron to the Lesser Flamingo isn’t a secret. Lake Natron is also an essential breeding ground for the Lesser Flamingo. Even though the lake is particularly warm and salty, Koerth-Baker notes, algae within the lake supports a species of tilapia adapted to the unusual conditions. And, just like the Great Salt Lake, Lake Natron is hardly lifeless.īoingBoing’s Maggie Koerth-Baker has already covered the peculiar fish that live in the alkaline waters of the strange lake. Dead pelicans, seagulls, and other birds take on a similar appearance as salt covers their bodies along the margins of the Great Salt Lake near my home. The flamingos and bats didn’t really become petrified in place, as if calcified by ominous clouds of salt-filled smog. But as Brandt himself has noted, the images are more art than science, and these pictures obscure the resiliency of life in and around the lake.Īs Brandt told New Scientist and other news sources, he collected the dead animals and posed them on their dark perches. The gloomy images make the lake look like a living museum where animals fall into the water and immediately turn to stone. If you’re a natural history fan and have been online at all this week, chances are you’ve seen photographer Nick Brandt’s stunning photos of mummified birds and bats along the shores of Tanzania’s Lake Natron.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |