The Wembere River is a river located in north western

Singida Region Singida Region (''Mkoa wa Singida'' in Swahili) is one of the regions of Tanzania. The regional capital is the municipality of Singida. The region is bordered to the north by Shinyanga Region, Simiyu Region and Arusha Region, to the northeast by ...

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 and ...

. The river is part of the water basin of

Lake Eyasi Lake Eyasi (formerly german: Njarasasee, "Njarasa Lake", and ''Hohenlohesee'', "Hohenlohe Lake") is a lake located in Karatu District of Arusha Region in north Tanzania. Lake Eyasi is the largest body of water in Arusha region. It is a seasonal ...

. The Wembere River originates in hilly country in central Tanzania at 6.0º south, and flows northwards through a branch of the

Eastern Rift Valley The Gregory Rift is the eastern branch of the East African Rift fracture system. The rift is being caused by the separation of the Somali plate from the Nubian plate, driven by a thermal plume. Although the term is sometimes used in the narrow se ...

. Its tributary the Nyahua River forms a seasonal floodplain 60 miles long and 1-5 km wide, covering 11,000 ha. After the Nyahua joins the Wembere from the northwest, the Wembere widens into a larger floodplain 105 km long and up to 20 km wide, and covering 140,000 ha. (4º12'-5º01' S/33º47'-34º11' E). Other tributaries are the Wamba, which joins from the northeast, the Mwaru, which joins from the east, and the Mapiringa, which joins from the west. The floodplain consists of flooded grasslands, inundated during the wet season and laced with drainage channels. Stands of the trees ''

Vachellia seyal ''Vachellia seyal'', the red acacia, known also as the shittah tree (the source of shittim wood), is a thorny, 6– to 10-m-high (20 to 30 ft) tree with a pale greenish or reddish bark. At the base of the feathery leaves, two straight, light ...

'' and ''

Vachellia drepanolobium ''Vachellia drepanolobium'', more commonly known as ''Acacia drepanolobium'' or whistling thorn, is a swollen-thorn acacia native to East Africa. The whistling thorn grows up to 6 meters tall. It produces a pair of straight spines at each node, ...

'' edge the seasonally-flooded portion of the plain. Above the floodplain, the eastern side of the watershed is chiefly

miombo woodland The Miombo woodland is a tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome (in the World Wide Fund for Nature scheme) located primarily in Central Africa. It includes four woodland savanna ecoregions (listed below) characterized b ...

, and the western side, called the Wembere Steppe, is ''Acacia-Commiphora'' savanna. Below the floodplain the river turns northeast and empties into the south end of

Lake Kitangiri A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much larger ...

. Lake Kitangiri empties into

via the

Sibiti River The Sibiti River is a seventy-five-kilometre waterway which connects Lake Eyasi and Lake Kitangiri, and one of the few non-man-made canals in the world. The river is a natural border between Singida Region and Simiyu Region Simiyu Region (''M ...

.Hughes, R. H. (20xx). ''A Directory of African Wetlands''. IUCN, 1992. pp. 253-254.

References

Great Rift Valley Rivers of Tanzania Southern Eastern Rift Zambezian flooded grasslands {{Tanzania-river-stub