Lake Burigi (originally Lueor-lo-Urigi, meaning "White Lake of Urigi") is an

endorheic An endorheic basin (; also spelled endoreic basin or endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, but drainage converges instead into lakes ...

lake in the

Karagwe Karagwe is one of the eight districts of the Kagera Region of Tanzania. It is bordered to the north by Uganda, to the east by the Bukoba Rural District, to the southeast by the Muleba District, to the south by the Ngara District and to the wes ...

district,

Kagera Region Kagera Region (''Mkoa wa Kagera'' in Swahili) is one of Tanzania's 31 administrative regions. The region covers an area of . The region is comparable in size to the combined land area of the nation state of Netherlands. Kagera Region is border ...

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

. Parts of the lake and its shore are situated within the Burigi Game Reserve.

History

Visited by Dr. Hans Meyer's East African expedition, its name on maps of the time was Urigi. The lake's discovery is attributed to Capt.

John Hanning Speke Captain John Hanning Speke (4 May 1827 – 15 September 1864) was an English explorer and officer in the British Indian Army who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa. He is most associated with the search for the source of the Nil ...

, who name it Lueor-lo-Urigi ("White Lake of Urigi").

Geography

The lake is long and wide. It has an elongated shape, the greatest distance between the two extremities being about . It is so narrow that from one side, the other can always clearly be seen. The lake's water is bright azure in color. Its area measures approximately . Fed by rivers from surrounding hills, the largest is Ruiza River. The lake is visible from Useni or Kavari.

Papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a ...

swamps and groundwater forest areas occur around the lake. The surrounding hills are brown, with dark green bush scatterings. Its receding waters have left great extents of flat plain on the sides and around the bays running far inland into valleys. The lake is sunk about below the average level of the bare grassy hills around it. There is a narrow basin at the head of the lake. Its shore is broken by numerous inlets. The Yanghiro district, which is situated on the eastern shore of the Urigi, is a hilly region, scattered over with villages and cultivated fields, as well as with woods of banana-trees. The study area received an average rainfall of 964.36 mm per year, the highest peak recorded in 1951. The trend of rainfall showed that many years had rainfall below the average while the temperature was found to increase from year to year, the situation which suggests the existence of climate change in the study area.

Flora and fauna

Its shores and waters are favored by birds, such as cranes, herons, pelicans,

African jacana The African jacana (''Actophilornis africanus'') is a wader in the family Jacanidae. It has long toes and long claws that enables it to walk on floating vegetation in shallow lakes, its preferred habitat. It is widely distributed in sub-Saharan A ...

s, egrets and waders, which find excellent feeding over the large spaces near the extremities and shore line of bays. These are covered with close-packed growths of ''Pistia stratiotes rigl'' plants. '' Kobus ellipsiprymnus'' and ''

Hippopotamus amphibius The hippopotamus ( ; : hippopotamuses or hippopotami; ''Hippopotamus amphibius''), also called the hippo, common hippopotamus, or river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of only two extant ...

'' frequent the area. There are armies of black mosquitoes. Lake fish were infested with guinea worm at the time of Stanley's expedition.

References

{{Lakes of Tanzania Burigi Geography of Kagera Region