PUBLIC TALK: The Wonders and Challenges of the Great African Lakes

A public talk by Sergei Katsev, Associate Professor, Large Lakes Observatory, University of Minnesota and 2014 UWA Gledden Visiting Fellow.

The string of large lakes held by the East African Rift is a true marvel of the World. These lakes contain a quarter of all the fresh water on the Earth’s surface and are critical economic resources to the region, providing drinking water, fisheries, and hydropower. These inland seas however, are under a continued stress from watershed development fuelled by population growth, fishing pressure, and climate change.

This talk will address the unique challenges of these large tropical lakes, as they change in response to climate, population pressures, and geologic forces. Focusing on permanently stratified (meromictic) lakes, it will discuss how the biological productivity is affected by the physical mixing dynamics, what sediment records tell us about the recent and geological history of the lakes, and how climate change can affect the lakes biological and other resources. It will describe how the accumulation of methane in Lake Kivu presents both an economic opportunity and a danger of a catastrophic limnic eruption that would threaten two million people, and what sediment records and physical and geochemical data tell us about the recent changes in the lake.

Cost: Free, but RSVP required via http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/katsev