The communities around Lake Chad have always lived by its water rhythms. Now, as climate change impacts intensify, they must find new ways to adapt. The Lake Chad Basin lies in the Sahel, on the southern edge of the Sahara. The basin is enormous, covering 2.5 million square kilometers (965,255 square miles), or 8% of the African continent, straddling eight countries. Lake Chad sits at the end point of this drainage basin, an unexpected bounty of water in a dry land. An estimated 3 million people live near the lake, and 49 million more live in the basin and depend on its resources. The amount of water in Lake Chad is closely linked to climate as it’s in a closed drainage system, with rivers leading into, but not out of, the lake. The volume of water going into the lake — via the Chari, Logone and other rivers — largely depends on the amount of rain in the catchment area. As the lake is wide and shallow, currently averaging less than 3 meters (9.8 feet) in depth, changes in rainfall have a dramatic effect on its size. The lake swells and recedes seasonally and between years. But the most dramatic changes happen over decades. Lake Chad straddles four countries: Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon. Image captured Dec. 2024 by Planet Labs. In the 1960s, Lake Chad’s waters covered 25,000 km2 (9,653 mi2), making it the sixth-largest lake in the world. Then, in the 1970s and ‘80s, as drought gripped the…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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