Download or read book Environmental Change and Response in East African Lakes written by J.T. Lehman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea for this book was born at the June 1996 meeting of the IDEAL Steering Committee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We had just completed a successful and stimulating special symposium during the annual meeting of the American Society for Limnology and Oceanography, and enthusiasm was running high for the production of a volume that could assemble in one place the scientific findings that were starting to emerge from East Africa. IDEAL, an International Decade for the East African Lakes, had ended one round of field investigations, many of which had been centered on Lake Victoria. As the climatologists, geologists, paleolimnologists, and biologists displayed their results and debated interpretations, it appeared that some paradigms were shifting, and that new explanations of climate history and modem processes were taking shape. The Steering Committee endorsed the production of a volume that would draw together the different research results that were emerging and which would be representative of the scope of science issues that exist within IDEAL. This book follows in the spirit of The Limnology, Climatology, and Paleoclimatology of the East African Lakes, published in 1996, but has a somewhat different purpose. The previous publication also included original science results, but it was conceived to review the state of knowledge, identify critical problems, and point to new paths of inquiry. It accompanied the development of our first Science and Implementation Plan for the East African Lakes.
Download or read book The East African Great Lakes Limnology Palaeolimnology and Biodiversity written by Eric O. Odada and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-03-09 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second International Symposium on the East African Lakes was held from 10-15 January 2000 at Club Makokola on the southern shore of Lake Malawi. The symposium was organized by the International Decade for the East African Lakes (IDEAL), a research consortium of African, European and North American scientists interested in promoting the investigations of African Great Lakes as archives of environmental and climatic dynamics. Over one hundred African, European and North American scientists with special expertise in the tropical lakes participated in the symposium which featured compelling presentations on the limnology, climatology, palaeoclimatology and biodiversity of the East African Lakes. It is their papers that comprise this book. The large lakes of East Africa are important natural resources that are heavily utilized by their bordering countries for transportation, water supply, fisheries, waste disposal, recreation and tourism. The lakes are unique in many ways: they are sensitive to climatic change and their circulation dynamics, water-column chemistry and biological complexity differ significantly from large lakes at higher latitudes; they have long, continuous, high resolution records of past climatic change; and they have rich and diverse populations of endemic organisms. These unique properties and the significance of the palaeolimnological records demand and attract research interest from around the world.
Download or read book Limnology Climatology and Paleoclimatology of the East African Lakes written by Thomas C Johnson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 679 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The large lakes of the East African Rift Valley are among the oldest on Earth, and are vital resources for the people of their basins. They are unique among the large lakes of the world in terms of their sensitivity to climatic change, rich and diverse populations of endemic species, circulation dynamics and water-column chemistry, and long, continuous records of past climatic change. A comprehensive study of the large African lakes is long overdue. The scientific justification for such an effort is noted in the previous paragraph and is illustrated in great detail in this volume. Societal need for the sustainable utilization of these lakes offers an even more compelling reason for examination of biological food webs, water quality, and past climate variability in East Africa. The lakes provide the most important source of protein for the people of the African Rift Valley, and fish populations are shifting dramatically in response to fishing pressure, introduction of exotic species, land use impact on water quality, and perhaps climatic change. Current estimates of primary productivity, the underpinning of the food resource, are extremely crude and based on only a few spot measurements.
Download or read book Africa s Lakes written by and published by UNEP/Earthprint. This book was released on 2006 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prepared as part of UNEP's contribution to the 11th World Lakes Conference (held in Nairobi, Kenya in November 2005), this publication examines the environmental changes taking place to Africa's lakes by analysing ground photographs, current and historical satellite images and scientific evidence. Changes highlighted include the rapid shrinking of Lake Songor in Ghana, partly as a result of intensive salt production, and the extraordinary changes in the Zambezi river system as a result of the building of the Cabora Basa dam site. Other impacts, some natural and some human-made and which can only be truly appreciated from space, include the extensive deforestation around Lake Nakuru in Kenya, and the falling water levels of Lake Victoria which is now about a metre lower than it was in the early 1990s. The analysis recognises the importance of Africa's lakes as a source of livelihoods for many local communities, their contribution to the socio-economic development of the continent and the need for the sustainable management of these resources in order to help overcome poverty and meet internationally agreed development goals by 2015.
Download or read book Hydrology Across Scales written by Lydia Atieno Olaka and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lakes of the East African Rift System (EARS) have been intensively studied to better understand the influence of climate change on hydrological systems. The exceptional sensitivity of these rift lakes, however, is both a challenge and an opportunity when trying to reconstruct past climate changes from changes in the hydrological budget of lake basins on timescales 100 to 104 years. On one hand, differences in basin geometrics (shape, area, volume, depth), catchment rainfall distributions and varying erosion-deposition rates complicate regional interpretation of paleoclimate information from lacustrine sediment proxies. On the other hand, the sensitivity of rift lakes often provides paleoclimate records of excellent quality characterized by a high signal-to-noise ratio. This study aims at better understanding of the climate-proxy generating process in rift lakes by parameterizing the geomorphological and hydroclimatic conditions of a particular site providing a step towards the establishment of regional calibrations of transfer functions for climate reconstructions. The knowledge of the sensitivity of a lake basin to climate change furthermore is crucial for a better assessment of the probability of catastrophic changes in the future, which bear risks for landscapes, ecosystems, and organisms of all sorts, including humans. Part 1 of this thesis explores the effect of the morphology and the effective moisture of a lake catchment. The availability of digital elevation models (DEM) and gridded climate data sets facilitates the comparison of the morphological and hydroclimatic conditions of rift lakes. I used the hypsometric integral (HI) calculated from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data to describe the morphology of ten lake basins in Kenya and Ethiopia. The aridity index (AI) describing the difference in the precipitation/evaporation balance within a catchment was used to compare the hydroclimatic of these basins. Correlating HI and AI with published Holocene lake-level variations revealed that lakes responding sensitively to relatively moderate climate change are typically graben shaped and characterized by a HI between 0.23-0.30, and relatively humid conditions with AI >1. These amplifier lakes, a term first introduced but not fully parameterized by Alayne Street-Perrott in the early 80s, are unexceptionally located in the crest of the Kenyan and Ethiopian domes. The non-amplifier lakes in the EARS either have lower HI 0.13-0.22 and higher AI (>1) or higher HI (0.31-0.37) and low AI (
Download or read book Influence of Climate Change and Human induced Environmental Degradation on Lake Victoria written by Julius B. Lejju and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2012 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lake Victoria basin, an international water body that offers the riparian communities a large number of important benefits, has in the last four decades experienced drastic environmental changes, with a significant drop in its water level in the more recent years. The changes in water level have significantly affected the energy supply in the region and threatened the lives of the riparian population engaged, directly and indirectly, in subsistence and commercial fishing, and the agricultural and industrial sectors. The reduction in lake levels has attracted conflicting speculation. Environmentalists attribute it to reduced rainfall experienced in the East African region, while hydrologists blame it on environmental degradation and excessive water release through the operations of the Kiira-Nalubale hydroelectric power dams at Jinja. This research provides evidence of long-term environment changes in Lake Victoria and a contribution to the understanding of the past environmental conditions in the lake basin. It provides the history of human environment interactions, including the possible cause for the dynamics of the lake levels, giving possible options that can help to remedy and/or mitigate the environmental degradation in the region.
Download or read book Climate Change and Water Resources in Africa written by Salif Diop and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-15 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The focus of this book is on the key water-related vulnerabilities to climate change in Africa, particularly in its most vulnerable areas, exploring potential management responses to such vulnerabilities. The African countries are particularly exposed and vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change, with important impacts on water resources and hydrological systems, water availability, water resource management and sea level variations. Already, under various anthropogenic pressures, the status of water resources in Africa has been changing over the past decades, with decreasing water quality, falling groundwater levels, and variability in rainfall, both in terms of timing and intensity. Climate change will further accelerate the rate of change, affecting the ability of people and societies to respond in a timely manner. It is clear that there is no quick fix to the pressures imposed on water resources by climate change. Increasing the resilience of ecosystems and communities to extreme events such as flooding and drought, and integrating climate change risks and opportunities into development decision-making is indeed a key challenge, as much a technical climate-change one, as a political and developmental challenge. The book, in this regard, intends to contribute to the debate around climate change in relation to water resources management in Africa, and in particular inform policy decisions and actions that will improve governments’ and communities’ ability to manage the challenges of climate change and variability in relation to the aquatic ecosystems that they depend on. The knowledge collected in this book will benefit policy makers, researchers, as well as other stakeholders.
Download or read book Progress and Level of Implementation of the East African Community Climate Change Policy Commitments in the Lake Victoria Basin with Respect to Water and Sanitation written by East African Sustainability Watch Network and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Limnology Climatology and Paleoclimatology of the East African Lakes written by A.Ivan Johnson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The large lakes of the East African Rift Valley are among the oldest on Earth, and are vital resources for the people of their basins. They are unique among the large lakes of the world in terms of their sensitivity to climatic change, rich and diverse populations of endemic species, circulation dynamics and water-column chemistry, and long, continuous records of past climatic change. A comprehensive study of the large African lakes is long overdue. The scientific justification for such an effort is noted in the previous paragraph and is illustrated in great detail in this volume. Societal need for the sustainable utilization of these lakes offers an even more compelling reason for examination of biological food webs, water quality, and past climate variability in East Africa. The lakes provide the most important source of protein for the people of the African Rift Valley, and fish populations are shifting dramatically in response to fishing pressure, introduction of exotic species, land use impact on water quality, and perhaps climatic change. Current estimates of primary productivity, the underpinning of the food resource, are extremely crude and based on only a few spot measurements.
Download or read book The Nile written by Henri J. Dumont and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-05-06 with total page 819 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What have we learnt about the Nile since the mid-1970s, the moment when Julian Rzóska decided that the time had come to publish a comprehensive volume about the biology, and the geological and cultural history of that great river? And what changes have meanwhile occurred in the basin? The human popu- tion has more than doubled, especially in Egypt, but also in East Africa. Locally, industrial development has taken place, and the Aswan High Dam was clearly not the last major infrastructure work that was carried out. More dams have been built, and some water diversions, like the Toshka lakes, have created new expanses of water in the middle of the Sahara desert. What are the effects of all this on the ec- ogy and economy of the Basin? That is what the present book sets out to explore, 33 years after the publi- tion of “The Nile: Biology of an Ancient River”. Thirty-seven authors have taken up the challenge, and have written the “new” book. They come from 13 different countries, and 15 among them represent the largest Nilotic states (Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya). Julian Rzóska died in 1984, and most of the - authors of his book have now either disappeared or retired from research. Only Jack Talling and Samir Ghabbour were still available to participate again.
Download or read book Past Climate Variability through Europe and Africa written by Richard W. Battarbee and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-11-06 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on two complementary time-scales, the Holocene (approximately the last 11,500 years) and the last glacial-interglacial cycle (approximately the last 130,000 years) to synthesize evidence of climate variability at the regional and continental scale across Europe and Africa. This is the first examination of historical climate variations at such a scale, and thus sets a benchmark for future research.
Download or read book Palaeoecology of Africa and the Surrounding Islands Volume 26 written by Heine Klaus and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-19 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers comprehensive and up-to-date information on research in many different disciplines which give an overall insight into the environmental history of Africa.
Download or read book Lakes of Africa written by Mostafa El-Sheekh and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2023-02-15 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lakes of Africa: Microbial Diversity and Sustainability examines microbial ecosystems in African lakes, including the history and formation of African lakes. The book describes how environmental stressors—including seasonal variations, climate change, and anthropogenic activities—affect microbial ecosystem dynamics in African lakes and the microbial responses to these stressors. The book explores and evaluates extremophiles in African lakes, including industrial biotechnology applications. The book highlights challenges facing microbial ecology in African lakes, as well as the design of models for solving these problems and predicting the future of lake microbial ecosystem sustainability. Includes unique case studies on both African lakes and brine lakes, providing real life examples of the topics discussed Provides a foundational background to the topic Presents definitions throughout, whenever a new term is introduced, for a seamless reading experience and background information
Download or read book Global Change Processes and Impacts in Africa written by Luanne Otter and published by East African Publishers. This book was released on 2007 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Climate Change Research at Universities written by Walter Leal Filho and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-02 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book provides a multidisciplinary review of current, climate-change research projects at universities around the globe, offering perspectives from all of the natural and social sciences. Numerous universities worldwide pursue state-of-the-art research on climate change, focussing on mitigation of its effects as well as human adaptation to it. However, the 2015 Paris 21st Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (COP 21)” demonstrated that there is still much room for improvement in the role played by universities in international negotiations and decision-making on climate change. To date, few scientific meetings have provided multidisciplinary perspectives on climate change in which researchers across the natural and social sciences could come together to exchange research findings and discuss methods relating to climate change mitigation and adaption studies. As a result the published literature has also lacked a broad perspective. This book fills that gap and is of interest to all researchers and policy-makers concerned with global climate change regardless of their area of expertise.
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History written by Sam White and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-08-10 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook offers the first comprehensive, state-of-the-field guide to past weather and climate and their role in human societies. Bringing together dozens of international specialists from the sciences and humanities, this volume describes the methods, sources, and major findings of historical climate reconstruction and impact research. Its chapters take the reader through each key source of past climate and weather information and each technique of analysis; through each historical period and region of the world; through the major topics of climate and history and core case studies; and finally through the history of climate ideas and science. Using clear, non-technical language, The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History serves as a textbook for students, a reference guide for specialists and an introduction to climate history for scholars and interested readers.
Download or read book Resilience and Collapse in African Savannahs written by Michael Bollig and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-11 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses the causes and consequences of environmental change in East Africa, asking whether local African communities are sufficiently resilient to cope with the ecological and social challenges that confront them. It focuses on the savannahs of the Baringo-Bogoria basin, and the surrounding highlands of Kenya’s northern Rift Valley that form the social-ecological system of the specialised cattle pastoralists and niche agricultural farmers who occupy these semi-arid lands. Historical studies of resilience spanning the past two centuries are linked with analysis of current environmental challenges, and the ecological, social, economic and political responses mounted by local communities. The authors question whether the most recent challenges confronting the peoples of eastern Africa’s savannahs – intensified conflicts, mounting poverty driven by demographic pressures, and dramatic ecological changes brought by invasive species – might soon led to a collapse in essential elements of the specialised cattle pastoralism that dominates the region, requiring a re-orientation of the social-ecological system. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies.
