The largest artificial lake in the world that took 5 years to fill | World | news

Lake Kariba is located between Zambia and Zimbabwe in southern Africa. It was formed by the impoundment of the Zambezi River in the Kariba Gorge, where the river narrows between hills of hard rock 250 miles below Victoria Falls.

It is 810 miles upstream from the river’s mouth in the Indian Ocean.

Lake Kariba is over 139 miles long and up to 25 miles wide. It occupies an area of ​​2,150 square miles and its storage capacity is 44 cubic miles. The average depth of the lake is 95 feet, with a maximum of 318 feet. As a result, they took five years to fill, between 1958 and 1963.

It is the world’s largest man-made reservoir by volume, four times larger than the Three Gorges Dam in China.

The huge body of water is believed to have caused induced seismicity in the seismically active region, with more than 20 earthquakes of magnitude five or greater on the Richter scale.

The Zimbabwean town of Kariba was built for construction workers on the lake’s dam. Some settlements, such as the village of Binga and Mlibizi in Zimbabwe and Siavonga and Singazogwe in Zambia, have expanded to accommodate people displaced by the river basin.

Construction of the Kariba Dam, a concrete arch dam across the Zambezi, began in November 1956 and was completed in 1959. The structure is 419 feet high, with a crest of 1,899 feet long and a volume of 36.3 cubic feet.

It supplies about 6.7 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, generated by the Kariba North Bank and South Bank companies (Zambia and Zimbabwe respectively). Its creation required the resettlement of more than 30,000 Batonka tribesmen from Zambia and the evacuation of thousands of wild animals, known as “Operation Noah”.

Although initially an unpopular project, the dam was later accepted because of the cheap electrical power it provides to Zambia’s thriving copper industry.

During the fill phase, the water had a high nutrient content from the flooded and decaying vegetation, which created a thick layer of fertile soil on the land that became the lake bed. As a result, the lake’s ecology is vibrant, with a number of fish species such as the sardine-like kapenta, Nile crocodiles and hippos.

Fish eagles, cormorants and other waterfowl are found on the shores of this lake, as well as large numbers of elephants and other big game species such as lions, cheetahs, leopards and buffaloes. Southern Matusadona National Park was once a refuge for black and white rhinos, but recent poaching has drastically reduced their numbers.

Both Zambia and Zimbabwe are now trying to develop the tourism industry along their respective shores of the lake.

However, after severe droughts and increased evaporation in the region, the lake’s live storage – the water available for power generation – dropped to just 1.1 meters in early September , according to the Zambezi River Authority (ZRA). This represents 7.7 percent of your usable storage.

As a result, Zambia faced 21-hour power cuts starting on September 14, when the hydroelectric plant was due to shut down, according to African Arguments. This was only the second time the power plant has been shut down since completion, the first time being in November 2022 on the Zimbabwean side.

The lake’s lowest recorded live storage was reached in December 2022, when it was just 10 centimeters above its minimum operating level, representing 0.8 percent of usable storage.

Severe droughts were linked to El Nino weather patterns and extreme weather conditions.