Lake Chad
Lake chad is a large shallow lake bordered by the African countries of Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria. The surrounding regions depend on lake chad as a primary source of fresh water and irrigation. This notebook will focus on monitoring the water supply in the Lake Chad region before and after the rainy season in 2015.
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# Enable importing of utilities
import sys
sys.path.append('..')
## The code below renders a map that can be used to orient yourself with the region.
from utils.data_cube_utilities.dc_display_map import display_map
display_map(latitude = (12.2, 14.5), longitude = (12.9, 15.5))
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Lake Chad is shrinking
Over the last 40 years, Lake Chad has decreased by more than 90% in surface area from 26,000 sq. km to 1,500 square km.
This shrinkage has been a particularly popular case study due to the following factors:
- the decline is large, and therefore easy to observe/monitor
- weather/flooding patterns are predictable
- the decline endangers many communities in the area. Studies on this region are important to mitigating the effects of a disappearing water supply.
Possible causes of this shrinkage include:
Over-irrigation
to meet the needs of a growing population in the region. Irrigation demands increased four-fold between 1983 and 1994, accounting for 50 percent of the additional decrease in the size of the lake.Climate change
A measured trend of dryer conditions. This brings about the need for more irrigation.Declining Discharge
Discharge from the Chari/Logone river system has decreased in the last 40 years.
This notebook is the first in a series of notebooks covering water-body analysis of Lake Chad. Specifically, we'll be looking at the effect that the rainy season has on the surface area of Lake Chad.
This analysis will require:
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