Lake Magadi
| Lake Magadi | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Geographical location | Kajiado County , Kenya | |
| Tributaries | especially hot springs | |
| Drain | no | |
| Data | ||
| Coordinates | 1 ° 52 ′ 0 ″ S , 36 ° 16 ′ 0 ″ E | |
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| Altitude above sea level | 579 m | |
| surface | 104 km² | |
| Maximum depth | 1 m | |
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particularities |
Soda lake |
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The Magadi ( Lake Magadi ) is next to Lake Natron is the smaller of two large soda lakes in Magadi soda-basin in the eastern arm of the East African Rift . The name of the lake comes from the word for salty in the Maasai language. The enormous occurrence of the salt mixture Trona (Na 3 HCO 3 CO 3 · 2H 2 O) makes it economically important. Trona has been mined by the Magadi Soda Company for more than 80 years and used for the production of potash and table salt .
geography
The lake is located in the eastern part of the East African Rift Valley ( Great Rift Valley ). The basin is bounded by the Ngong Mountains to the east and the Nguruman Escarpment to the west. The extremely negative hydrological budget of the drainless lake basin leads to the extreme alkalinity of the water. The lake is the southernmost lake in the state of Kenya in Kajiado County , about 100 km southwest of the capital Nairobi .
Flora and fauna
The lake is home to numerous flamingos , pelicans , herons , Egyptian geese and fish eagles . The common cichlid Alcolapia grahami is important . The lake is also one of the most important distribution areas of the plover . Furthermore, the archaeon Natrialba magadii was isolated from the lake .
environment
The lake is a salt pan that is only covered by a salt lake less than a meter deep during the rainy season. The mineral trona precipitates out of the strongly alkaline salt water , which in some places reaches a thickness of 40 meters.
Web links
Single receipts
- ↑ Simon Delany, Derek Scott, Tim Dodman, David Stroud (Eds.): An Atlas of Wader Populations in Africa and Western Eurasia. Wetlands International , Wageningen 2009, ISBN 978-90-5882-047-1 .
- ↑ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0723202084800508