Logone

This article is about the Logone River. For the “Republic of Logone” see Dar el Kuti .

Logone na Lógone, Lághame
Course of the Logone in the catchment area of ​​the Schari (middle left)
Data
location	Cameroon Chad
River system	Shari
Drain over	Shari  → Lake Chad
origin	Confluence of the eastern Logone ( Pendé ) and Logone Occidental / western Logone or Mbéré 9 ° 5 ′ 20 ″  N , 16 ° 27 ′ 55 ″  E
Source height	358  m
muzzle	at N'Djamena in the Shari coordinates: 12 ° 6 ′ 22 ″  N , 15 ° 2 ′ 7 ″  E 12 ° 6 ′ 22 ″  N , 15 ° 2 ′ 7 ″  E
Mouth height	298  m
Height difference	60 m
Bottom slope	about 0.12 ‰
length	about 500 km (with Vina 965 km)
Catchment area	78,000 km²
Discharge at the Bongor gauge (1537150) A Eo : 73,700 km² Location: 450 km above the mouth	NNQ (min. Month Ø) MNQ 1948–1986 MQ 1948–1986 Mq 1948–1986 MHQ 1948–1986 HHQ (max. Month Ø)	16 m³ / s 50 m³ / s 492 m³ / s 6.7 l / (s km²) 1636 m³ / s 2420 m³ / s
Left tributaries	Tandjile, Tsanaga
Reservoirs flowed through	Maga dam on a tributary
Big cities	Kousséri
Medium-sized cities	Bongor
View of Logone-Birni (From the book The earth and its inhabitants, Africa 1893)

The Logone , with its most distant source river, the Vina , is a 965 km long river in Central Africa and the most important tributary of the Shari .

course

The Logone (also Na Lógone and Lághame ) arises from the confluence of its two source rivers, about 20 kilometers northeast of the city of Benoye : the Pendé , which comes from the Central African Republic , and the Mbéré, which is fed from Cameroon , or the Logone Occidental in south-west Chad. It flows in a north-north-westerly direction and forms the border between Cameroon and Chad in its lower reaches over a length of over 300 km . In the south of N'Djamena it unites with the Shari, which from there forms the border and a little later flows into Lake Chad . The catchment area of the river is around 78,000 km².

Graphic representation of the sole slope of the Logone including Logone Occidental and Vina

designation

The information about the rivers in the region is partly different. In some cases, the Mbéré is equated with the Logone Occidental (western Logone), which unites with the Pendé and forms the Logone. On other maps it changes its name to Logone Occidental after the confluence with the Vina. Sometimes the suffix Occidental is simply left out, since the Eastern Logone (Logone Oriental) is clearly defined by the name Pendé.

Majo Kebi - Logone Wetlands

The high water season for the Logone starts in August. In this the river floods the Plaines d'inondation du Logone et les dépressions Toupouri and the Waza plain ; both areas are under the protection of the Ramsar Convention . When the Yaeres dries up, part of the water flows back into the Logone, the other part flows into the El Beid and extends the flood season of the river. It also feeds around 850,000 tons of sediment to the floodplain .

Hydrology

The logone has an unusual hydrology. On the one hand, during floods it loses part of its water via the Mayo Kébbi into the Niger catchment area, and on the other to the wetlands between Logone and El Beid . The flow rate of the river was measured from 1948 to 1986 in Bongor , a city in Chad about 200 kilometers after the confluence of the Pendé, about 450 kilometers before the confluence with the Shari in N'Djamena. It should be noted that the amount of water up to the mouth is reduced by the strong evaporation in the Yaere, as the river up to there has only small inflows, but high losses due to the flood plains. The mean annual discharge observed in Bongor during this period was 492 m³ / s, fed by an area of ​​around 73,700 km², a large part of the river's catchment area . In its last stretch, in N'Djamena, it was 400 m³ / s.

Average monthly discharge of the Longone at the hydrological station of Bongor (in m³ / s) (1948–1986)

Mega Chad

The Logone in the east, the former outflow of the Mega Lake Chad with Lake Fianga in the middle and the Mayo Kebi flowing from east to west (below) (a narrow river bed in the east until it joins the former outflow directly after the Fianga) )

The connection between Logone and Mayo Kébbi via the flood plain corresponds to the discharge from the historic mega-Lake Chad in its maximum extent more than 5000 years ago. Therefore, at least at times of high tide, the catchment areas of the Benue and the Logone cannot really be separated from each other. This connection is probably the cause of the occurrence of African manatees in the tributaries of Lake Chad, which is cut off from the sea.

population

In the eastern lower Logon lowlands, the Kotoko people established several historical sultanates, which are generally summarized as Kotoko states . Among them were the sultanates of Kousséri , Logone-Birni , Makari , Goulfey and others who were politically dependent on the great empires Kanem-Bornu or Baguirmi and now belong to Cameroon.

history

In Chad, the administrative regions Logone Oriental and Logone Occidental are named after the river; Ober-Logone was an administrative district of the German colony of Cameroon.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Living on the edge - Wetlands and birds in a changing Sahel
2. ↑ ^{a b} GRDC - Chari Basin: The Logone in Bongor
3. ↑ Ramsar information about Cameroon ( Memento of the original from July 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. PDF document 
4. ↑ Leblanc et al. 2006 Reconstruction of megalake Chad using shuttle radar topographic mission data. Palaeogeography, palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology 239, pp. 16-27 ISSN  0031-0182 ISSN  1872-616X

Web links

• Excerpt from the German Colonial Lexicon 1920