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Endorheic Lake Dynamics: Remote Sensing
Published in Yeqiao Wang, Fresh Water and Watersheds, 2020
Many other endorheic lakes like the Aral Sea are under stress due to climate change and human activities. In the era of global change, it is of crucial importance to inventory and monitor endorheic lakes in the context of global warming. However, the abundance, distribution, and dynamics of these lakes are not well understood. There is a pressing need to assess endorheic lake dynamics under global warming and anthropogenic pressures and their potential impacts on water resources.
Transaqua: power, political change and the transnational politics of a water megaproject
Published in International Journal of Water Resources Development, 2021
Adegboyega B. Adeniran, Katherine A. Daniell
Large water infrastructure projects are back on the water development agenda for most African countries (Blomkvist & Nilsson, 2017), triggering the revival of long-conceived or long-abandoned projects and the emergence of new ones. One of the reasons for this shift is better access to new sources of funds, e.g. from China (Foster et al., 2010; McKinsey & Company, 2017) and other multilateral banks, including the African Development Bank (AfDB, 2019). One such project is Transaqua, a water transfer megaproject (WTMP) designed to transfer water from the Congo River in Central Africa to replenish Lake Chad. Lake Chad is a shallow endorheic lake in Central Africa with a drainage basin covering an estimated 2,500,000 km2 (Kindler et al., 1989); see Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC, 2017) for comprehensive climatic, demographic, political and hydrological statistics on the basin.
Different invasibility of permanent and temporary waterbodies in a semiarid Mediterranean Island
Published in Inland Waters, 2019
Luigi Naselli-Flores, Federico Marrone
Regarding natural lentic waters, permanent and temporary brackish waterbodies are mainly located along the southern coast of the island, with the exception of the endorheic Lake Pergusa, the largest Sicilian natural lake (surface 1.4 km2), which is located in the middle of the island. Permanent shallow freshwater lakes and ponds are generally found at elevation >1000 m a.s.l. Conversely, freshwater temporary ponds (i.e., those waterbodies alternating a wet and a totally dry phase) represent the most common type of natural aquatic ecosystem on this, as well as other, Mediterranean islands (Marrone et al. 2006a, 2019). These ecosystems host a peculiar aquatic biota, adapted to overcome complete desiccation and representing the bulk of Sicilian inland waters native biodiversity (Marrone et al. 2006a, 2009).
Limnology and the future of African inland waters
Published in Inland Waters, 2018
Richard D. Robarts, Tamar Zohary
An extreme example of the impact of changing precipitation and river flows is Lake Chad, a large, shallow (mean depth <2 m since the 1970s), endorheic lake located in West Africa with a long history of wet and dry periods. The main water inflow, the Chari River, varies with annual rainfall over the basin and determines the size of the lake. Over its history, Lake Chad has existed in 1 of 3 states: Large, Normal, or Small (Lemoalle et al. 2012). Large Lake Chad, with a surface area of 24 000 km2, existed for the last time in the 1950s; Normal Lake Chad, covering about 18 000 km2, was characteristic of the 1960s; and Small Lake Chad exists as several separated waterbodies, with a permanent open-water pool of about 1700 km2 and adjacent permanent or seasonal marshes (2000–14 000 km2) to the north and south. The last shift from Normal to Small occurred during an extended drought between 1973 and 1975; since then, the lake has remained Small, with the northern part only occasionally and partially inundated.