Kalahari
The Kalahari (also Kgalagadi ) is a thorn bush savannah , sometimes also dry savannah , but is sometimes referred to as a desert because of the predominant sand . It stretches on both sides of the tropic from the South African province of Northern Cape through Namibia and Botswana over an area of over one million square kilometers. It is part of the approximately twice as large Kalahari Basin, which extends into Angola and Zambia .
origin of the name
The origin of the name is still unclear. One interpretation says that the Kalahari is a misspelling of the colonial rulers for the Setswana word Kgalagadi (from kgala for "distance" and gadi for "big, wide").
Occasionally “Kalahari” is mistaken for a corruption of the Khoikhoi word karri (hard), which William John Burchell wrote as Karriharri and Robert Jacob Gordon as Macarigari . Robert Moffat and Forbes, on the other hand, believed that it was named after a tribe called the Kgalagad, Kgalagadi, or Makgalagadi . Moffat also claimed that the tribe lived in the Khalagari or Kalagars, which means "dry" or "waterless place".
geography
Most of the Kalahari is in Botswana and Namibia. To the southwest lies the Namib Desert , which is much more arid than the Kalahari. The Kalahari lies mostly at 800 to 1200 meters above sea level. The only river that carries water all year round is the Okavango . It rises in Angola and fans out in the Kalahari into the Okavango delta in order to seep away there or further along. There are large salt pans in the Kalahari , including the Makgadikgadi salt pans in the east .
Large parts of the Kalahari are designated as nature reserves, such as the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park in the border area of South Africa and Namibia, the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and the Okavango River Delta in northwest Botswana. Since the late 1990s, the Kalahari has been opened up by the Trans-Kalahari Highway . This well-developed road is an important section of the transport route from the Indian Ocean in Mozambique to the Atlantic Ocean in Namibia.
geology
The most extensive part of the Kalahari - the "Central Kalahari" - is located in Botswana and extends here with its western foothills into Namibia. The Kalahari is located in the central area of the Kalahari Basin (English: Kalahari Basin ), a sedimentary basin that extends between the Orange River to Angola, in the west of Namibia in the east to Zimbabwe . In the north, the basin extends to the Democratic Republic of the Congo .
In the Kalahari, sandy soils ( arenosols ) predominate, which are red in the south and west and yellow to gray in the north and east. The thickness of the sandy soils is up to 200 meters. The sand deposits extend into the central Congo Basin . They cover an area of 2.5 million square kilometers on the territory of several states. The layer structure is known as the Kalahari system (also known as Kalahari Sands ). There are loose sediments from aeolian and lacustric formation processes.
The amount of sand was created by erosion of sandstones from the Kalahari Group and Karoo Supergroup .
Only in the most recent geological history, around 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, were the dunes stabilized by vegetation, so that today a dry savannah characterizes the landscape. The majority of the dunes do not migrate like in the Namib Desert. There are grasses, thorn bushes and acacia trees that can survive the long dry periods of around ten months a year. In the southwestern area of the Kalahari there are Aeolian dunes.
There are numerous freshwater deposits, some of them extensive, under the earth's surface. They serve as drinking water reservoirs; however, there is a risk of oversalting through contact with salt layers.
climate
The annual rainfall is around 150–250 mm in the south and west, while it increases to over 500 mm in the north and east, so that the climate there is sub-humid . Except for this area, the Kalahari is located in a continental arid climate zone. It is characterized by long dry periods with irregular summer rains between December and February. During these months there are also violent thunderstorms . Temperatures are over 30 ° C during the day and below 0 ° C at night, especially in winter.
The drought is due to the location between the 20th and 30th southern latitude . Just as in the same northern area, the air masses are forced to descend from the Urpassat . This causes an increasing warming of the air masses, whereby the relative humidity decreases and it comes to dry, cloudless climates. The mean temperatures are below those of the Sahara due to the higher elevation .
Flora and fauna
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The Okavango Delta is an atypical part of the Kalahari because of its abundance of water and animals as well as its vegetation . Depending on the season and the water level, there are large herds of animals of many species found in southern Africa.
The largest part of the Kalahari is determined by special dune and desert grasses, but also by tall acacias , which with their long roots reach the deep, but abundant water veins. After rains the vegetation increases strongly. One then speaks of the Green Kalahari .
Settlements
The Kalahari is the retreat and today's main settlement area of the San . This people is - together with the Khoikhoi - the first people to settle in this region and until the 16th century they were at home in all countries of southern Africa. As part of the African migration, however, the Bantu peoples pushed into the areas of the San. The survivors were assimilated or fled to the hostile Kalahari and learned to adapt to their difficult living conditions. The San are organized in families and live as nomadic hunters and gatherers from the rich wildlife of the Kalahari and the fruits and roots that occur here. They get water from water-storing plants, for example from the fruits of the horned cucumber ( Cucumis metuliferus ), and by collecting dew.
Traditionally the San have no private property; This and the centuries of isolation from the rest of the world make it very difficult for many San to catch up with the materialistically determined modern times. The resettlement and sedentary attempts made by the Botswana government to protect the Central Kalahari Game Reserve have largely failed due to resistance from many San.
There are no large towns in the Kalahari. The towns of Maun , Ghanzi and Kang in Botswana each have a few thousand inhabitants.
economy
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Some areas of the Kalahari are fallow, others are livestock farming. In particular, the Kalahari in Namibia is divided into farms or Herero tribal areas across the board. In the Namibian Kalahari, mainly cattle , sheep and game are kept. From here meat is exported to Europe. The Kalahari is also suitable for horse breeding . Lucerne is grown in various places in the Kalahari that have sufficient groundwater .
Another branch of the economy is tourism. More and more tourists are attracted by the Kalahari with its long, straight sand dunes and the diversity of animals here. Special branches of tourism in the Kalahari are hunting , for which there are separate hunting farms , astronomy and gliding . Various farms provide astronomers with telescopes and other special facilities that enable them to photograph and explore the starry sky under the favorable conditions of the Kalahari . The Kalahari is suitable because there is hardly any stray light here and because the Kalahari is relatively high up. The Kalahari is also particularly suitable for gliding in the summer months. Several world records were set from Bitterwasser Airport .
In Okavangobecken is tourism the only important economic branch. "Kalahari salt" is extracted in salt lakes and is exported as high-priced salt to North America and Europe.
Another Kalahari product is Kalahari silk, which is marketed in English as Kalahari wild silk .
The Trans-Kalahari Railway ( German Trans-Kalahari Railway ) is a railway construction project that aims to enable the export of mineral raw materials from Botswana via the port in Walvis Bay .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d The Kalahari - Desert or Savannah? Allgemeine Zeitung of February 28, 2013, accessed on August 1, 2014
- ↑ Portrait at zoodirektoren.de , accessed on August 1, 2014
- ↑ on the meaning of South African community names
- ↑ Kalahari by Mary Sadler-Altena ( Memento from October 1, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
- ↑ R [ené]. A [rthur]. Pelletier: Mineral Resources of South-Central Africa. Oxford University Press, Cape Town etc. 1964, p. 7
- ^ Ian Gerald Haddon: The Sub-Kalahari Geology and Tectonic Evolution of the Kalahari Basin, Southern Africa . Dissertation at the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2005, pp. 101–106 (English)
- ↑ The Green Kalahari
- ^ Philip's College Atlas for Southern Africa. George Philip & Son, London 1976, ISBN 0-540-05320-1 , p. 12.
- ↑ See for example: Meatco
- ↑ See for example: Dunside Stud.Retrieved September 7, 2018
- ↑ See for example: Kiripotib Aufgerufan on September 7, 2018
- ↑ Entry at Lebensmittellexikon.de , accessed on August 1, 2014
- ↑ See the English language website Kalahari-wild-silk.Accessed September 7, 2018
Coordinates: 23 ° 0 ′ S , 23 ° 0 ′ E