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Lake Ngami

 
Dictionary: Nga·mi
(əng-gä') pronunciation, Lake

A lake of northern Botswana north of the Kalahari Desert. The marshy lake covered an extensive area during the Pleistocene Epoch but was greatly reduced in size during the 1880s, when papyrus growth blocked the mouth of its main tributary.

 

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Shallow lake, northwestern Botswana, north of the Kalahari Desert. It was a large lake, estimated at more than 170 mi (275 km) in circumference when the explorer David Livingstone sighted it in 1849. The lake varies in size with the amount of rainfall, and, although it is much smaller today than in Livingstone's time, it is rich in birdlife.

For more information on Lake Ngami, visit Britannica.com.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Lake Ngami
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Ngami, Lake (əng-gä'mē, ng-), reedy marsh, c.40 mi (64 km) long and from 4 to 8 mi (6.4-12.9 km) wide, NW Botswana. During the Pleistocene epoch, the lake covered an extensive area. Since the late 1880s, when papyrus growth blocked the mouth of its main tributary, the lake has greatly shrunk in size; it now intermittently receives water from the Cubango River.


Wikipedia: Lake Ngami
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Lake Ngami
Location Botswana
Coordinates 20°30′S 22°40′E / 20.5°S 22.667°E / -20.5; 22.667Coordinates: 20°30′S 22°40′E / 20.5°S 22.667°E / -20.5; 22.667
Lake type endorheic
Primary inflows Okavango Delta
Primary outflows None (Endorheic)
Basin countries Botswana

Lake Ngami is an endorheic lake in Botswana north of the Kalahari Desert. It is seasonally filled by the Okavango River, via the Okavango Delta, as well as the Taughe. It is one of the fragmented remnants of the ancient Lake Makgadikgadi. Although the lake has shrunk dramatically beginning from 1890, it remains an important habitat for birds and wildlife, especially in flood years.[1]

Lake Ngami had many famous visitors during the 19th (and into the 20th) century. In 1849 David Livingstone described it as a "shimmering lake, some 80 miles (130 km) long and 20 wide". Livingstone also made a few cultural notes about the people living in this area; he noticed they had a story similar to that of the Tower of Babel, except that the builders' heads were "cracked by the fall of the scaffolding" (Missionary Travels, chap. 26). Charles John Andersson (who published Lake Ngami; or, Explorations and Discoveries during Four Years' Wanderings in the Wilds of Southwestern Africa in 1855) and Frederick Thomas Green also visited the area in the early 1850s. Frederick Lugard led a British expedition to the lake in 1896. Arnold Weinholt Hodson passed through the area on his journey from Serowe to Victoria Falls in 1906.

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Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lake Ngami" Read more