Earth Equity News

Africa's Lake Tanganyika Warming Fast, Life Dying. By Tim Cocks, Reuters, May 16, 2010. "Africa's lake Tanganyika has heated up sharply over the past 90 years and is now warmer than at any time for at least 1,500 years, a scientific paper said on May 16, adding that fish and wildlife are threatened. The lake, which straddles the border between Tanzania in East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is the world's second largest by volume and its second deepest, the paper says... The 'Great Lakes' such as Tanganyika, Malawi and Kenya's lake Turkana were formed millions of years ago by the tectonic plate movements that tore Africa's Great Rift Valley. Some 10 million people live around Tanganyika and depend upon it for drinking water and food, mostly fish. Geologists at Rhode Island's Brown University used carbon dating to measure the age of sediments on the lake floor. They then tested fossilized micro-organisms whose membranes differ at various temperatures to gauge how hot it was at times past. The results [subscription] were published in Nature Geoscience on Sunday… But the paper admits that other factors, like over fishing, may be doing more harm than any warming."