Satellite Picture Shows Africa's Dying Lake

Lake Chad is disappearing. Satellite images published this week showed that you could walk across an expanse of what was once one of the world's largest lakes without getting your feet wet. In the past four decades the lake has shriveled from 23,000 sq km (14,300 sq m) to just 900 sq km, a retreat that will force the redrawing of maps because the water no longer reaches Nigeria, Niger or Cameroon, and is now entirely within the borders of Chad.

An image captured by Nigeria Sat-1, Nigeria's first satellite, was displayed in the capital Abuja this week as part of an exhibit titled The Tale of the Dying Lake. In contrast to images taken by US satellites from 1963, Lake Chad, thought to be the remnant of an inland sea, is shown to be mostly dry, a vast vista of vegetation and sand bordering the Sahara desert. Nigeria's space research and development agency showed the images as part of a summit on disaster management and emergency preparedness.

According to fossil evidence, Lake Chad has probably dried out half a dozen times in the past 1,000 years. Scientists attribute the latest shrinkage to droughts and increased irrigation.