The African Center for Aquatic Research and Education is partnering with the Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute and the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology to host a session titled Monitoring and management of the African Great Lakes at the SIL2018, Nanjing conference.

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The session description:

The African Lakes provide significant ecosystem goods and services to the immediate communities and riparian countries. They are also important on the world stage due to their many qualities, such as fisheries, biodiversity, and cichlid radiation and speciation, and oil and gas. They are, in addition, important as climate sentinels and in studying evolutionary biology. The Rift Valley lakes, that constitute the largest proportion of the African great lakes, are deep and contain the longest sediment records of the watershed, climate, and ecosystem changes. Despite their proven importance to humanity in the region and the world, these lakes’ resources are threatened by overexploitation, pollution, eutrophication, and biodiversity loss. Fish catches in these lakes have declined, which has caused a significant outcry from both the communities and scientists alike. Water quality of some of the lakes has highly deteriorated (e.g. Lake Victoria) as a result of poor land-use practices in their catchments, agricultural intensification, urbanization, and deforestation. Sedimentation has infested almost all of the lakes, thus hastening biodiversity loss of especially demersal fauna, which is dominated by cichlids, most of which are endemic to these lakes. These Lakes, however, lack long term datasets on ecosystem research, which obsecures the assessment of the trends and patterns in ecosystem deterioration and shifts. Thus, in this session, we seek to bring together research that improves our understanding of ecosystem functioning and to discuss collaborative efforts for ecosystem research, of the African great lakes; and deliberate on how best to manage and protect the resources.

 

For more information on the session, contact Ted Lawrence; for more information on the SIL2018 conference, including attendance, registration, and the entire program, click here. 

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Session co-chaires: Ismael Arron Kimirei (1), Shaung Chen (2), Rashid Adam Tamatamah (1), and Ted Lawrence (3, 4)

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1) Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute 

2) Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology

3) The African Center for Aquatic Research and Education

4) The Great Lakes Fishery Commission

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*http://www.sil2018.com/dct/page/70075