A photo from open sources
A few thousand years ago, this lake was the largest in Central Africa, and if it existed in the same volumes now, that would be the largest in the world. NASA shared a satellite image of this reservoir, in its current borders.
This pond, called Mega Chad, has stretched now the existing Sahara desert and had an area of 390 thousand square kilometers.
According to experts, it took the lake two hundred years to decrease to 350 square kilometers. Currently residents Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon are actively pumping water out of it, and the lake continues to decline.
A photo from open sources
In 2015, scientists spoke in detail about how much time it took the ancient lake to shrink to its current size. Researchers wrote that about 5,000 thousand years ago wet season with high rainfall ended, and the largest lake in Africa began to decline.
An area called the Bodele’s pool thousands of years ago was covered with water. According to researchers, about a thousand years ago there still remained the remains of moisture. However the lack of rain in finally dried the lake.
Today, Bodele is the largest source of dust that has winds. crosses the Atlantic and has a beneficial effect on Amazon rainforest. From the Sahara towards the Amazonian forests almost two hundred million tons of dust are sent by air every year and sand, however, about fifteen percent of this mass settles in the ocean. However, the remaining one hundred and fifty million tons reach the Amazon and replenish its soil, for example, twenty thousands of tons of porcelain, so necessary to her. Just so much river and washes it a year into the ocean.
Africa Water Time
