Malagarasi
| Malagarasi | ||
 The Malagarasi river system |
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| Data | ||
| location |
 Burundi Tanzania
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| River system | Congo | |
| Drain over | Lukuga → Lualaba → Congo → Atlantic | |
| muzzle | in Lake Tanganyika Coordinates: 5 ° 15 ′ 23 ″ S , 29 ° 48 ′ 6 ″ E 5 ° 15 ′ 23 ″ S , 29 ° 48 ′ 6 ″ E
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| length | 475 km | |
| Catchment area | 130,000 km² | |
| Left tributaries | Ugalla ; Moyowosi ; Lumpungu | |
| Right tributaries | Makere | |
The Malagarasi is a river in East Africa. Its source is in Tanzania ( Kigoma region ) near the border with Burundi , about 50 km northeast of Lake Tanganyika at an altitude of 1650 meters.
course
It flows first to the northeast away from Lake Tanganyika and forms the border between Tanzania and Burundi for about 110 km, then returns to it in a large arc, first to the southeast and then to the west. It has a length of 475 kilometers. About 80 kilometers before reaching the confluence with Lake Tanganyika, 45 km south of the port city of Kigoma , the Malagarasi is dammed by upward clods of the East African Trench and forms an extensive marshland (Malangarasi-Moyowosi marshes), in which the river forms a large part sediments and organic materials carried along. The swamps are 1200 meters above sea level and cover an area of 3.25 million hectares, 250,000 of which are lakes and swamps that also carry water during the dry season. The marshland was included in the Ramsar Convention for the Protection of Wetlands. The landscape in the catchment area of the Malagarasi is determined by the Miombo forest savanna type (tree savannah).
Hydrology
The catchment area of the Malagarasi covers 130,000 square kilometers, making it the second largest in Tanzania after the Rufiji . The annual amount of water at Mberagule is measured at 6.9 cubic kilometers; Alongside the Ruzizi, it is the most important tributary of Lake Tanganyika.
fauna
The fauna of the Malagarasi is determined by the change between fast-flowing sections with a considerable gradient in the upper reaches and on the edge of the East African Rift and the almost stagnant water in the swamp zones. Cichlids such as Orthochromis kasuluensis , O. rubrolabialis and O. uvinzae live in the flowing areas , as well as African suckling catfish ( Chiloglanis ) and various carp fish from the genera Opsaridium and Raiamas , which play the ecological role of European trout here. Larger cichlids from the genus Oreochromis as well as Astatoreochromis straeleni and Haplochromis paludinosus can be found in the calmer sections of the water, and the small cichlid Neolamprologus devosi directly in the estuary . The seasonal fish of the genus Nothobranchius and the lung fish can also survive a drying out of the waters as a species, the former through permanent eggs that they laid in the ground before they dried out, the latter by surviving the dry season in a cocoon in the ground. The most important fish of the Malagarasi for human nutrition are the predatory catfish Clarias gariepinus , which can grow to a meter, and the large cichlid, Oreochromis malagarasi . Overall, the Malagarasi is inhabited by 108 fish species belonging to 48 species from 20 fish families. Of these species, 15% are of Congolese origin, 7% come from the catchment area of Lake Victoria and the Nile .