Lake Elmenteita

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Lake Elmenteita

Coordinates	0°27′S 36°15′ECoordinates: 0°27′S 36°15′E
Basin countries	Kenya
Surface area	18 km²
Surface elevation	1,670 meters ASL

Lake Elmenteita, also spelled Elementaita, is a soda lake, in the eastern limb of East Africa's Great Rift Valley, about 120 km northwest of Nairobi, Kenya.

1 Geography
2 History
3 Ecology
4 Associated sites
5 References

[edit] Geography

Lake Elmenteita from the Nairobi-Nakuru highway

Elmenteita is derived from the Masaai word muteita, meaning "dust place", a reference to the dry and dusty quality of the area, especially between January and March. The town of Gilgil is located near the lake. In the south-to-north sequence of Rift Valley lakes, Elmenteita is located between Lake Naivasha and Lake Nakuru. The major Nairobi—-Nakuru highway runs along the nearby escarpment affording motorists a spectacular vista towards the lake.

[edit] History

The Lake Elmenteita area saw its first white settlement when Lord Delamere (1879-1931) established his Soysambu, a 100,000-acre (400 km²) ranch, on the western side of the lake. Delamere gifted the land nearest the lake to his brother-in-law, the Honorable Galbraith Lowry Egerton Cole (1881-1929), part of whose "Kekopey Ranch", where he is buried, is preserved today as the Lake Elementaita Lodge.

The nearby Soysambu Farm is still occupied by Lord Delamere's descendants, including the controversial Thomas P. G. Cholmondeley.

Lake Elmenteita has been a Ramsar site since 2005 ^[1].

[edit] Ecology

Over 400 bird species have been recorded in the Lake Nakuru/Lake Elmenteita basin. Elmenteita attracts visiting flamingoes, both the Greater and Lesser varieties, which feed on the lake's crustacean and insect larvae and on its suspended blue-green algae, respectively. Tilapia were introduced to the lake from Lake Magadi in 1962 and since that time the flamingo population has dwindled considerably. The tilapia attract many fish-eating birds that also feed upon the flamingo eggs and chicks. Over a million birds that formerly bred at Elmenteita are now said to have sought refuge at Lake Natron in Tanzania.

The lake's shores are grazed by zebra, gazelle, eland and families of warthog.

The lake is normally very shallow (< 1 m deep) and bordered by trona-encrusted mudflats during the dry seasons. During the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, Lake Elmenteita was at times united with and expanded Lake Nakuru, forming a much larger dilute lake. Remnants of the former joined lake are preserved as sediments at various locations around the lake basins, including former shorelines.