Mai Ndombe Lake
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Mai-Ndombe-See formerly Leopold-ll-See |
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| Mai-Ndombe-See, false color picture | ||
| Geographical location | DR Congo | |
| Tributaries | Lokoro , Lotoi | |
| Drain | Fimi (further via Kasai , Congo into the Atlantic ) | |
| Data | ||
| Coordinates | 2 ° 3 ′ 1 ″ S , 18 ° 18 ′ 20 ″ E | |
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| Altitude above sea level | 300 m | |
| surface | 3200 to (in the rainy season) 8200 km² | |
| Maximum depth | 7 to (in the rainy season) 10 m | |
| Middle deep | 5 m | |
The Mai-Ndombe-See ( French : Lac Mai-Ndombe) is a large natural lake in the province of Mai-Ndombe in the west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo .
description
The lake drains south into the Congo via the Fimi and Kasai rivers . Until 1972 it was called Leopoldsee (after Leopold von Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, King of the Belgians ). Mai-Ndombe means “black water” in Lingála . The lake has an irregular shape that changes according to the season, with an area of 2300 to over 8000 km 2 (in the rainy season ) and depths of 2.5 to 7 meters, up to a maximum of 10 meters. Its water is acidic, the pH ranges from 4.2 to 5.5.
The lake is surrounded by low, wooded shores, with dense and humid rainforest in the north and a mixture of forest and savannah in the south.
Local shipping and fishing take place on the lake.
fauna
Little is known about the lake's fish fauna. There are some endemic cichlids in the lake : Hemichromis cerasogaster , the transvestite cichlid ( Nanochromis transvestitus ) and Nanochromis wickleri .
Individual evidence
- ^ Origin and function of a closed depression in equatorial humid zones: the Lake Télé in North Congo
- ↑ Hemichromis cerasogaster on Fishbase.org (English)
- ↑ Donald J. Stewart, Tyson R. Roberts, "A New Species of Dwarf Cichilid Fish with Reversed Sexual Dichromatism from Lac Mai-Ndombe, Zaïre", Copeia , Vol. 1984, no. 1, Feb. 23, 1984, pp. 82-86.
- ↑ Ulrich K. Schliewen, Melanie LJ Stiassny, “A new species of Nanochromis (Teleostei: Cichlidae) from Lake Mai Ndombe, central Congo Basin, Democratic Republic of Congo”, Zootaxa Vol. 1169, no. 33, Apr. 10, 2006. ( Memento of the original from December 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
