1. Nile river
The
Nile (
Arabic: النيل,
Eg. en-Nīl,
Std. an-Nīl; Coptic:
ⲫⲓⲁⲣⲱ,
P(h)iaro; Ancient Egyptian:
Ḥ'pī and
Iteru) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world.
[2]
It is 6,853 km (4,258 miles) long. The Nile is an "international" river
as its water resources are shared by eleven countries, namely, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt.
[3] In particular, the Nile is the primary water source of Egypt and Sudan.
[4]
The Nile has two major tributaries, the White Nile and Blue Nile.
The White Nile is considered to be the headwaters and primary stream of
the Nile itself. The Blue Nile, however, is the source of most of the
water and fertile soil. The White Nile is longer and rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, with the most distant source still undetermined but located in either Rwanda or Burundi. It flows north through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and South Sudan. The Blue Nile (Amharic:
ዓባይ?,
ʿĀbay[5][6]) begins at Lake Tana in Ethiopia
[7] and flows into Sudan from the southeast. The two rivers meet near the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.
The northern section of the river flows northwards almost entirely through the Sudanese desert to Egypt then ends in a large delta that empties into the Mediterranean Sea. Egyptian civilization and Sudanese kingdoms
have depended on the river since ancient times. Most of the population
and cities of Egypt lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of Aswan, and nearly all the cultural and historical sites of Ancient Egypt are found along riverbanks.
2. Okavango Delta
The
Okavango Delta (or
Okavango Grassland) in Botswana is a very large inland delta formed where the Okavango River reaches a tectonic trough in the central part of the endorheic basin of the Kalahari. All the water reaching the Delta is ultimately evaporated and transpired,
and does not flow into any sea or ocean. Each year approximately 11
cubic kilometres of water spreads over the 6,000-15,000 km² area. Some
flood-waters drain into Lake Ngami.
[1] The Moremi Game Reserve, a National Park, is on the eastern side of the Delta. This statistical significance helped the Okavango Delta secure a position as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa, which were officially declared on February 11, 2013 in Arusha, Tanzania.
[2] On the 22nd June, 2014, the Okavango Delta became the 1000th site to be officially inscribed on the
UNESCO World Heritage List.
[3][4]
The area was once part of Lake Makgadikgadi, an ancient lake that mostly dried up by the early Holocene.
Although the Okavango Delta is widely believed to be the world's
largest inland delta, it is not. In Africa alone there are two larger
similar geological features: the Sudd on the Nile in South Sudan, and the Inner Niger Delta in Mali.
3. Ngorongoro Crater
The
Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) is a conservation area and a UNESCO World Heritage Site located 180 km (110 mi) west of Arusha in the Crater Highlands area of Tanzania. Ngorongoro Crater, a large volcanic caldera within the area, is recognized by one private organization as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa.
[3]
The conservation area is administered by the Ngorongoro Conservation
Area Authority, an arm of the Tanzanian government, and its boundaries
follow the boundary of the Ngorongoro Division of the Arusha Region.
It has been reported in 2009 that the government authority has proposed
a reduction of the population of the conservation area from 65,000 to
25,000.
There are plans being considered for 14 more luxury tourist
hotels, so people can access "the unparalleled beauty of one of the
world's most unchanged wildlife sanctuaries", however, the people who
own the land have had few benefits from tourism. None of the senior
level positions in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area are yet held by a
member of the local Maasai pastoralists, who, in 2013, were aided by an international Avaaz campaign from being evicted from pastures bordering Serengeti National Park in order to facilitate the interests of a private luxury safari company.
4. Serengeti
The
Serengeti (
//) ecosystem is a geographical region in Africa. It is located in north Tanzania and extends to south-western Kenya between latitudes 1 and 3 degrees south latitude and 34 and 36 degrees east longitude. It spans approximately 30,000 km
2 (12,000 sq mi). The Kenyan part of the Serengeti is known as Maasai Mara.
The Serengeti hosts the largest terrestrial mammal migration in the world, which helps secure it as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa
[1] and one of the ten natural travel wonders of the world.
[2]
The Serengeti is also renowned for its large lion population and is one
of the best places to observe prides in their natural environment.
[3] The region contains the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and several game reserves.
Approximately 70 larger mammal and 500 avifauna species are found there. This high diversity is a function of diverse habitats, including riverine forests, swamps, kopjes, grasslands, and woodlands.
[4] Blue wildebeests, gazelles, zebras, and buffalos are some of the commonly found large mammals in the region.
There has been controversy about a proposed road to be built through the Serengeti.
[5]Serengeti is derived from the Maasai language, Maa; specifically, "Serengit" meaning "Endless Plains".
History
Much of the Serengeti was known to outsiders as Maasailand. The Maasai
are known as fierce warriors and live alongside most wild animals with
an aversion to eating game and birds, subsisting exclusively on their
cattle. Historically, their strength and reputation kept the newly
arrived Europeans from exploiting the animals and resources of most of
their land. A rinderpest epidemic
and drought during the 1890s greatly reduced the numbers of both Maasai
and animal populations. The Tanzanian government later in the 20th
century re-settled the Maasai around the Ngorongoro Crater.
Poaching and the absence of fires, which had been the result of human
activity, set the stage for the development of dense woodlands and
thickets over the next 30–50 years. Tsetse fly populations now prevented any significant human settlement in the area.
By the mid-1970s, wildebeest and the Cape buffalo populations had
recovered and were increasingly cropping the grass, reducing the amount
of fuel available for fires.
[8] The reduced intensity of fires has allowed Acacia to once again become established.
5. Sahara Desert
The
Sahara (Arabic:
الصحراء الكبرى,
aṣ-Ṣaḥrāʾ al-Kubrā , 'the Great Desert') is the largest subtropical hot desert and third largest desert after Antarctica and the Arctic.
[1] At over 9,400,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it covers most of North Africa, making it almost as large as China or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea to the east, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts to the Atlantic Ocean to the west. To the south, it is delimited by the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna that composes the northern region of central and western Sub-Saharan Africa.
Some of the sand dunes can reach 180 metres (590 ft) in height.
[2] The name comes from the plural Arabic language word for desert (
صحارى ṣaḥārā [3][4] [ˈsˤɑħɑːrɑː])
.
Climate
The Sahara is a harsh environment with extreme conditions. It is the world's largest subtropical hot desert, and the world's hottest desert. The Sahara has mainly a subtropical, hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification
BWh)
with long, prolonged, extremely hot to scorching summers while the
winters stay short, brief, extremely warm to truly very hot. The climate
of this desert is also characterized by a perpetual clear sky, fair
weather and by very low, and even almost non-existent rainfall but the
precipitation is also very irregular and sporadic. Although the Sahara
is located under the Tropic of Cancer
in the most part, this climate is said to be subtropical due to the
subtropical high pressure belt, which is mainly responsible of the hot
desert climate. The northern fringe of the Great Desert receives very
low winter rainfall, where low pressure systems associated with the polar front
arrive as being very weak and very attenuated. The southern fringe of
the Great Desert receives summer irregular rainfall but relatively low
which can only occur when the Intertropical Convergence Zone
moves up far enough northerly or when the tropical low pressure systems
are strong enough to cause precipitation. In both cases, the climate is
very arid and the rainfall only occur on a few days per year. Between
the two parts, the central Sahara has an extremely arid climate, with
the influence of the continental trade wind. The western coastal desert zone bask under the cool ocean current, the Canary Current
which is responsible of a higher clouds and fog formation. According to
the dryness of the air, the climate of the Sahara can not not be
extreme, since any place where visible and invisible cloud cover as well
as the water vapor contained within the atmosphere don't act as
temperature regulator, the day between sunlight and ground in order to
reduce the roasting, and the night between the Earth surface and space
in order to reduce cooling process by sending the absorbed infrared
radiation of contracted heat during the day towards the sky, any place
having that feature will be characterized by large temperature
variations and therefore by an extreme climate. The climates of the
Sahara possess relatively high diurnal temperature ranges
(between days and nights), and in some rare cases, brutal temperatures
variations due to the extremely dry and pure air as well as the clarity
of the desert skies. The presence of slow but constant winds make the
dryness and the aridity of the Sahara even worse, by enabling a greater
evaporation. The climate oscillates between the extreme heat during a
typical summer day and the coolness of the winter nights. This desert is
noted for his weather and climate extremes : indeed the Sahara contains
the places, making part of the hottest, driest and sunniest places
found in the entire world. The climate has mainly oppressively hot,
sunny, windy and dry conditions all year long. The Sahara is the perfect
model of the hot deserts as well as their climate. Carl Ritter
liked to say that the Sahara was "the South of the World". This
apparently paradoxical reflection means that the Sahara was the hottest
and the driest region on Earth. The annual mean temperature of the Great
Desert, reduced to the sea level is higher than the one of all other
deserts found on the planet
.
6. Mount Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro //,[5] with its three volcanic cones, Kibo, Mawenzi and Shira, is a dormant volcanic mountain in Tanzania. It is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain in the world at 5,895 metres (19,341 ft) above sea level.
Geology
Kilimanjaro is a large stratovolcano and is composed of three distinct volcanic cones: Kibo, the highest; Mawenzi at 5,149 metres (16,893 ft);
[6] and Shira, the shortest at 4,005 metres (13,140 ft).
[7] Uhuru Peak is the highest summit on Kibo's crater rim. Tanzania National Parks, a governmental agency,
[1] and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
[2] list the height of Uhuru Peak as 5,895 m (19,341 ft). That height is based on a British Ordnance Survey in 1952.
[8]
Since then, the height has been measured as 5,892 metres (19,331 ft) in
1999, 5,891 metres (19,327 ft) in 2008, and 5,888 metres (19,318 ft) in
2014.
[8]Mawenzi and Shira are extinct, while Kibo is dormant and could erupt again. The last major eruption has been dated to between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago.
[9] Kibo has gas-emitting fumaroles in its crater.
Several collapses and landslides have occurred on Kibo before, one creating the area known as the Western Breach.
7. Red Sea Reef
The
Red Sea, or what is sometimes called the
Erythraean Sea, is a seawater
inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez (leading to the Suez Canal). The Red Sea is a Global 200 ecoregion. The sea is underlain by the Red Sea Rift which is part of the Great Rift Valley.
The Red Sea has a surface area of roughly 438,000 km² (169,100 mi²).
[1][2]
It is about 2250 km (1398 mi) long and, at its widest point, 355 km
(220.6 mi) wide. It has a maximum depth of 2211 m (7254 ft) in the
central median trench, and an average depth of 490 m (1,608 ft).
However, there are also extensive shallow shelves, noted for their
marine life and corals. The sea is the habitat of over 1,000 invertebrate species, and 200 soft and hard corals. It is the world's northernmost tropical sea.
