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Chambeshi River
The Chambeshi (or Chambezi) River of northeastern Zambia is the most remote headstream of the Congo River (in length) and therefore it is considered the source of the Congo River. (However, by volume of water, the Lualaba River provides a greater streamflow to the Congo.) The Chambeshi rises as a stream in the mountains of northeast Zambia near Lake Tanganyika at an elevation of above sea level. It flows for 480 km into the Bangweulu Wetlands, which are part of Lake Bangweulu. By the end of the rainy season in May, the river delivers a flood which recharges the wetlands and inundates the Zambesian grasslands to the southeast. The water then flows out of the wetlands as the Luapula River. For more than 100 km of its length as it flows to the east of Kasama, the river consists of a maze of channels in wetlands about 2 km wide, in a floodplain up to 25 km wide. Further downstream, where it is bridged by the Kasama–Mpika road and the Tazara Railway, the perman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Congo Basin
The Congo Basin (french: Bassin du Congo) is the sedimentary basin of the Congo River. The Congo Basin is located in Central Africa, in a region known as west equatorial Africa. The Congo Basin region is sometimes known simply as the Congo. It contains some of the largest tropical rainforests in the world and is an important source of water used in agriculture and energy generation. The rainforest in the Congo Basin is the largest rainforest in Africa and second only to the Amazon rainforest in size, with 300 million hectares compared to the 800 million hectares in the Amazon. Because of its size and diversity, many experts have characterized the basin's forest as important for mitigating climate change because of its role as a carbon sink. However, deforestation and degradation of the ecology by the impacts of climate change may increase stress on the forest ecosystem, in turn making the hydrology of the basin more variable. A 2012 study found that the variability in precipita ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wet Season
The wet season (sometimes called the Rainy season) is the time of year when most of a region's average annual rainfall occurs. It is the time of year where the majority of a country's or region's annual precipitation occurs. Generally, the season lasts at least a month. The term ''green season'' is also sometimes used as a euphemism by tourist authorities. Areas with wet seasons are dispersed across portions of the tropics and subtropics. Under the Köppen climate classification, for tropical climates, a wet season month is defined as a month where average precipitation is or more. In contrast to areas with savanna climates and monsoon regimes, Mediterranean climates have wet winters and dry summers. Dry and rainy months are characteristic of tropical seasonal forests: in contrast to tropical rainforests, which do not have dry or wet seasons, since their rainfall is equally distributed throughout the year.Elisabeth M. Benders-Hyde (2003)World Climates.Blue Planet Biomes. Retr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NASA Earth Observatory
NASA Earth Observatory is an online publishing outlet for NASA which was created in 1999. It is the principal source of satellite imagery and other scientific information pertaining to the climate and the Environment (biophysical), environment which are being provided by NASA for consumption by the general public. It is funded with public money, as authorized by the United States Congress, and is part of the EOS Project Science Office located at Goddard Space Flight Center. , NASA Earth Observatory has won the Webby Awards, Webby People's Voice Award in Education three times. There were a series of publicized images issued by the website in 2008, including imagery of clouds streaming over the Caspian Sea, dust storms curling off the coast of Morocco, the crumbling of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, Hurricane Bertha (2008), Hurricane Bertha, and others. See also * Earth observation ** Earth observation satellite * Space exploration References External links * NASA NASA onli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TAZARA Railway
The Tazara Railway, also called the Uhuru Railway or the Tanzam Railway, is a railway in East Africa linking the port of Dar es Salaam in east Tanzania with the town of Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia's Central Province. The single-track railway is long and is operated by the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA). The governments of Tanzania, Zambia, and the People's Republic of China built the railway to eliminate landlocked Zambia's economic dependence on Rhodesia and South Africa, both of which were ruled by white-minority governments.Thomas W. Robinson and David L. Shambaugh. ''Chinese Foreign Policy: theory and practice'', 1994. Page 287. The railway provided the only route for bulk trade from Zambia's Copperbelt to reach the sea without having to transit white-ruled territories. The spirit of Pan-African socialism among the leaders of Tanzania and Zambia and the symbolism of China's support for newly independent African countries gave rise to Tazara's designation as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mpika
Mpika is a town in the Muchinga Province of Zambia, lying at the junction of the M1 Road to Kasama and Mbala and the Tanzam Highway ( Great North Road) to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in the north-east and Lusaka in the south-west. It also has a railway station on the TAZARA Railway about away. Mpika is situated between the Muchinga Escarpment to the east and vast miombo plains to the west. The town has an estimated population of 40,000 inhabitants (2008), while the district population is estimated at 150,000 inhabitants. Since Mpika District was the biggest district in Zambia before its division in 2017, the population density was less than 4 people per square kilometre. History In about 1930, Mpika was selected as a way-point on the air route from Europe to South Africa, and an airfield was built there. Gervas Clay, wife to Betty Clay, was posted to Luwingu in 1930 as a Provincial Administrator in Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service. One of his tasks was to arrange for the purch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floodplain
A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudie, A. S., 2004, ''Encyclopedia of Geomorphology'', vol. 1. Routledge, New York. The soils usually consist of clays, silts, sands, and gravels deposited during floods. Because the regular flooding of floodplains can deposit nutrients and water, floodplains frequently have high soil fertility; some important agricultural regions, such as the Mississippi river basin and the Nile, rely heavily on the flood plains. Agricultural regions as well as urban areas have developed near or on floodplains to take advantage of the rich soil and fresh water. However, the risk of flooding has led to increasing efforts to control flooding. Formation Most floodplains are formed by deposition on the inside of river meanders and by overbank flow. Whereve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kasama, Zambia
Kasama is a city in the Northern Province of Zambia. It serves as the provincial capital and the headquarters of Kasama District. Location It is situated on the central-southern African plateau, approximately , by road, north-east of Lusaka, the capital and largest city in Zambia. Kasama is located on the M1 road (old Great North Road) from Mpika in the south to Mbala and Mpulungu, at the tip of Lake Tanganyika, in the north. Population The city population grew considerably in the 1970s and 1980s after construction of the TAZARA Railway through the city, and the tarring of the Great North Road, Zambia. Its population, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, was 74,243 in 2000 and had increased to 113,779 in 2010. History In 1898/1899, a crisis over the succession of the Chitimukulu led to Bishop Joseph 'Moto Moto' Dupont gaining the agreement of Bemba chiefs to the British colonial Administrator of North-Eastern Rhodesia, Robert Codrington taking control of the are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luapula River
The Luapula River is a section of Africa's second-longest river, the Congo. It is a transnational river forming for nearly all its length part of the border between Zambia and the DR Congo. It joins Lake Bangweulu (wholly in Zambia) to Lake Mweru (shared between the two countries) and gives its name to the Luapula Province of Zambia.Terracarta/International Travel Maps, Vancouver Canada: "Zambia, 2nd edition", 2000 Source and upper Luapula The Luapula drains Lake Bangweulu and its swamps into which flows the Chambeshi River, the source of the Congo. There is no single clear channel connecting the two rivers and the lake, but a mass of shifting channels, lagoons and swamps, as the explorer David Livingstone found to his cost. (He died exploring the area, and one of his last acts was to question Chief Chitambo about the course of the Luapula.)Blaikie, William Garden (1880): ''The Personal Life Of David Livingstone''Project Gutenberg Ebook #13262 release date: August 23, 2004.D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zambezian Flooded Grasslands
The Zambezian flooded grasslands is an ecoregion of southern and eastern Africa that is rich in wildlife. Setting The Zambezian flooded grasslands can be found on seasonally- or permanently-flooded lowlands in the basin of the Zambezi and neighboring river basins. These enclaves lie in the Zambezian region, a broad belt of seasonally-dry miombo and mopane savannas and woodlands that extend east and west across Africa, from northern Botswana, Namibia, and Angola in the west to Tanzania and Mozambique in the east. Large enclaves of flooded grassland include: * Kilombero Valley and Mkata Plain in southern Tanzania * Malagarasi-Muyovozi floodplain and Ugalla River floodplain in western Tanzania * Wembere River- Lake Kitangiri floodplain in Tanzania * The Okavango Delta in Botswana * around Lake Chilwa in Malawi * The Barotse Floodplain, Kafue Flats, Busanga Swamp, and Lukanga Swamp in the Zambezi basin of Zambia. * The upper Chambeshi River, Bangweulu Swamp, the Luapula River de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flood
A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrology and are of significant concern in agriculture, civil engineering and public health. Human changes to the environment often increase the intensity and frequency of flooding, for example land use changes such as deforestation and removal of wetlands, changes in waterway course or flood controls such as with levees, and larger environmental issues such as climate change and sea level rise. In particular climate change's increased rainfall and extreme weather events increases the severity of other causes for flooding, resulting in more intense floods and increased flood risk. Flooding may occur as an overflow of water from water bodies, such as a river, lake, or ocean, in which the water overtops or breaks levees, resulting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Bangweulu
Bangweulu — 'where the water sky meets the sky' — is one of the world's great wetland systems, comprising Lake Bangweulu, the Bangweulu Swamps and the Bangweulu Flats or floodplain.Camerapix: ''Spectrum Guide to Zambia.'' Camerapix International Publishing, Nairobi, 1996. Situated in the upper Congo River basin in Zambia, the Bangweulu system covers an almost completely flat area roughly the size of Connecticut or East Anglia, at an elevation of 1,140 m straddling Zambia's Luapula Province and Northern Province. It is crucial to the economy and biodiversity of northern Zambia, and to the birdlife of a much larger region, and faces environmental stress and conservation issues.Halls, A.J. (ed.), 1997. "Wetlands, Biodiversity and the Ramsar Convention: The Role of the Convention on Wetlands in the Conservation and Wise Use of Biodiversity". Ramsar Convention Bureau, Gland, Switzerland With a long axis of 75 km and a width of up to 40 km, Lake Bangweulu's permanent open ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zambia
Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the northeast, Malawi to the east, Mozambique to the southeast, Zimbabwe and Botswana to the south, Namibia to the southwest, and Angola to the west. The capital city of Zambia is Lusaka, located in the south-central part of Zambia. The nation's population of around 19.5 million is concentrated mainly around Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt Province to the north, the core economic hubs of the country. Originally inhabited by Khoisan peoples, the region was affected by the Bantu expansion of the thirteenth century. Following the arrival of European exploration of Africa, European explorers in the eighteenth century, the British colonised the r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
