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I was tempted to convert this one to black & white but decided against in in the end. I like the color of the wooden beams and the softness of the yellow light on a white surface. You’re looking up from the bottom of one of the staircases of “Drents Museum” in Assen to the roof of the former coach house (I added a night shot of the outside a couple of weeks ago www.flickr.com/photos/100_woorden/21934943603/)
I really like the contrast between the old building and the new underground exhibition spaces architect Erick van Egeraat created.
Usually there's not this much water in the Amargosa River, but it had just rained the day before.
This photo appeared in the following ideotrope albums:
Biking the Mojave Fall 2007 - Introduction
I biked through Death Valley in October 1996. It was 109°F at Furnace Creek. The area is beautiful, but it was way too hot at that time of year. I knew I wanted to come back on my bicycle when it was cooler. This year it worked out to take about 3 weeks after Thanksgiving. I ended up spending 18 days to cycle from Palm Springs to Las Vegas. I spent about half of that time in Death Valley NP. In Baker I met a group of cyclists on racing bikes with a support vehicle. They were cycling from Palm Springs to Las Vegas in 2 days. I saw a lot more desert than they did.
Coachella Valley and Joshua Tree National Park
I crossed the Coachella Valley on Ramon Rd. It was over 70°F, probably the warmest day of the trip. It wasn't 'til I turned onto Thousand Palms Rd. that I felt like I was heading out into the desert on my own. The San Andreas Fault system runs along the northern end of the Coachella Valley. The faults allow groundwater to rise to the surface resulting in a number of California fan palm oases. It's wonderful to see oases in the desert.
It was a 1300m climb on Berdoo Canyon Rd. to the Coachella Valley-Pleasant Valley saddle in Joshua Tree NP. I didn't see a single person or vehicle in Berdoo Canyon. Climbing out of Pleasant Valley I saw the first person, a fellow adventurer. Patrick was walking solo across Joshua Tree NP from west to east. That's a heck of a trek. That park is huge and has only one known spring. Patrick had set up two water caches before his trip.
Amboy Road and Mojave National Preserve
I bought enough food in 29 Palms to last 4 days to Baker. Heading east on the Amboy Rd. I met the only other touring cyclist of the trip. He had come down from Bishop through Death Valley NP, Baker, Kelso, Amboy - much the same route I was planning to take. When I met him, he had run out of food. I shared some almonds with him but didn't have much sympathy with his plight. The reason he didn't buy food in Baker was because there wasn't a health food store! Well, I told him there was a grocery store in 29 Palms, but it might not be up to his standard.
One of the things I was looking forward to on this trip was experiencing the transition zone between the Sonoran Desert (lower, farther south) and the Mojave Desert (higher, farther north). Creosote bushes grow in both, but most other flora is limited to one ecosystem or the other. In the transition zones you can see a mix of vegetation. What I saw ended up being less dramatic than Washington County, Utah where the Colorado Plateau, the Basin and Range country, and the Mojave Desert all come together. Joshua Trees were the main ecosystem indicator for me. I knew I was climbing high when I started to see them.
I was surprised how much traffic there was on the Amboy Rd. It wasn't much, but a lot of the paved roads that I was on during the trip would have one car every 10-30 minutes and perhaps none all night. The only truly busy roads were the road north out of Baker (on a Saturday morning) and the Pahrump-Las Vegas superhighway which has a wonderful bicycle lane.
I climbed Sheep Hole Pass to get into the Amboy Valley. It was in the Amboy Valley where I became accustomed two aspects important to cyclists in the Mojave:
Distances are deceiving. You can see really far. It takes much longer to cross these valleys that it appears that it would.
The slight inclines up alluvial fans or other fill climb a lot more than they appear to. In Colorado I'm not accustomed to seeing the whole climb since there are usually canyon climbs here. Leaving Amboy, for example, I climbed over 3000 ft. on a slowly rising alluvial plane. It took hours.
I enjoyed time off the bike to walk out to and up Amboy Crater. The following day I climbed to the top of the Kelso Dunes. And one day later I climbed one of the cinder cones east of Baker. I enjoyed having a diversion each day. Each of those areas is beautiful in its own way. The creosote bushes in the Amboy Valley are particularly green because of the shallow water table. Kelso Dunes are simply fantastic, and the cinder cone area with over 30 cinder cones and not another person felt like another planet.
In Baker I bought enough food to last 10 days and ate at the Mad Greek at my brother's recommendation. I had taken a rest day the previous day because of rain, and Baker was a bit flooded. Folks were out pushing water around with brooms. At the store the locals were telling each other how much their roofs leaked.
Death Valley National Park
Heading north of Baker the saddle that separates the Silurian Valley from Death Valley is only about a 50' climb. From there I left the pavement and stopped at Saratoga Springs to see the incredible wetlands in the desert. I had planned on climbing the Ibex Dunes, but wind was blowing sand off the top of the dunes and everything was still a bit wet from the rain. The following day I reached the pavement, took it for 5 miles and then headed west up Warm Springs Canyon.
The 1400m climb up Warm Springs Canyon was not the longest of the trip, but it was the toughest. The climb started out hard from below sea level in Death Valley and continued to be hard all the way to the saddle leading into Butte Valley. I struggled in my easiest gear (which is really low) the whole way. Surprisingly I walked very little. It always seemed to be just slightly easier to pedal than to walk.
Butte Valley felt remote. The views to the east were phenomenal giving Greater View Spring its name. I could see range after range. I stopped at Stella Anderson's place and cut some chicken wire to repair my glasses. The rattling had loosened a screw which I couldn't find. It was important to get a good fix since I wore those glasses a lot riding in the early morning and late afternoon. I found I had about 10 hours of light to ride in with perhaps 45 minutes of twilight on either end to mess around in camp. The sun was theoretically up for 8 or 9 hours, but it was often a lot less than that in the canyons. My repair job worked well, and I didn't even strip the threads so the glasses are good as new again :)
Mengel Pass is rough and keeps too many people from taking this route between Death Valley and Panamint Valley. Down in Goler Wash I met Rock(y), one of two residents of Ballarat. His father is the other. Rocky was poking around Goler Wash with his girlfriend who was visiting from LA. He had worked with various mining operations in the area, and I enjoyed his stories. It was also fun to talk with his Isreali girlfriend. We compared this desert with the eastern Mediterranean desert where I have also cycled.
In Ballarat the following day I talked with Rocky some more, but the girlfriend had already returned to LA. There are a surprising number of springs on the west side of the Panamints (due to faults, I'm sure) and a surprising number of fighter jets playing overhead. I scared a coyote into some bushes near a spring and then was scared myself by the jet passing just overhead. Once the quiet returned I could hear the coyotes, packs of them, howling and yipping in the bushes. The yipping made it sound like there were a lot of youngsters. Fun to hear the bushes make such unusual noises.
Hunter Mountain to Racetrack Playa
I was pretty tired this day and finally made it to Panamint Springs where I had planned to get water. There's a store as well, but they really only have candy bars. The restaurant, however, was able to sell me some bread and cheese. I bought a veggie burger for lunch as well. That rejuvenated me enough to climb about half of the 1100m paved climb that afternoon.
I was lucky that the following day was stunningly warm since I climbed to over 7000 ft. The 1100m paved climb was followed by 600m of climbing on a dirt road. I'm sure it ended up being more than that since there were a number of descents thrown in as well. To give an idea of the terrain the only two flat places I went through that day were named: Lee Flat and Ulida Flat! Lee Flat was filled with the most Joshua trees I've ever seen in one place. I camped in Ulida Flat next to one of the only Joshua trees out there.
I made it over Hunter Mountain, through Hidden Valley, down Lost Burro Gap, and arrived at Teakettle Junction with enough water to be able to make the ~16 mile detour to Racetrack Playa. Of course I'd seen photos of the moving rocks at Racetrack Playa, but I was absolutely blown away being at the site in person. It's not simply the amazement of seeing the evidence of the moving rocks and all the different directions and shapes of the tracks, but also how well preserved the area is. It wouldn't take too many people moving rocks from the tracks, driving on the playa, or walking out there when the surface is wet to really ruin the magic of the place. Additionally Racetrack Playa is so big and so flat. The flat playa blends in in the distance with the hills miles away. I loved this place. I was lucky enough to be there when I was. The rain from 5 days earlier had completely dried out, and it rained some more just 10 hours after I was there.
I recovered my stashed gear and water at Teakettle Junction and headed uphill into a cold, stiff wind climbing out of Racetrack Valley. By this point in the trip I had started to associate Joshua trees with cold weather. At the saddle in the twilight I made it my goal to descend far enough down to get away from the Joshua trees and perhaps into warmer weather. It was practically dark by the time I got off my bike, but I succeeded! It sprinkled off and on all night, but I was dry and fairly warm.
Through the bottom of Death Valley
The downhill continued all the way to the pavement at Ubehebe Crater, but I had to push the bike a bit once I got to the lava/cinder area. The black sand of the roadbed was much finer and deeper than the surface of most of the descent. Getting to Ubehebe concluded what I had planned for this trip. The only thing left was to get to Las Vegas. Berdoo Canyon, Mengel Pass, and Hunter Mountain had all been hard excursions, but each took about a day less than I had (conservatively) expected. I had time to make it a pleasant, easy ride to Vegas. I hiked around Ubehebe Crater and relaxed in the wind at the parking lot. Only two cars plus a ranger came by during the ~3 hours I was there. Each car stopped, the occupants got out, took a couple photos, and were driving away less than 2 minutes later. Incredible! This place is the middle of nowhere. I couldn't understand why anyone would drive so far and spend so little time. It turns out though that Ubehebe is only a 10 mile detour from the Scotty's Castle road.
I didn't make much distance this day even though it was flat and I had a tailwind after Ubehebe. I camped illegally near the paved road but was careful to avoid washes since I could tell it was going to storm. Storm it did. The wind bent my tent sideways, and rain poured down for hours. Death Valley received about a third of their annual average rainfall in this ~6 hour period. It was December 7, and it rained almost as much as it had from January 1 to December 6. The nice flat sandy spot I had chosen for my tent was just a bit lower than the surrounding area. The whole area was really quite flat, but the soil there can't absorb water very quickly. In the middle of the night I found my tent sitting in an inch or so of water. Only my thermarest was above it. I moved the tent in the pouring rain, but it was too late. Most of my stuff was pretty wet. Both pairs of socks and the bottom of my down bag were soaked. I wrapped my feet in a wool scarf like a Ace bandage and tried to get some sleep.
I was up early in the morning. I had managed to keep my down coat fairly dry so I put that over my damp clothes to ride away in the morning. Tons of rocks up to the size of softballs had poured across the 2-lane paved highway out of washes that were only a foot or two wide. It had snowed down to 4000'. In every direction were snow-covered peaks. I was so lucky to be down low, near pavement. The dirt roads that I had spent much of the last week on were probably impassable that morning. Ulida Flat where I had camped two nights earlier was probably covered in snow. I was able to keep warm biking in my down coat, but I was down at sea level, the warmest place around!
The sun came out. Everything warmed up. The views were phenomenal. In spite of the damp clothes it was a fantastic day to be cycling. At Furnace Creek I was directed to the sunny employee picnic area where I pulled everything out of my bags and dried everything out while enjoying lunch and wine from the grocery store. I hung out there for 2-3 hours before anyone else showed up. It was Herb, the night maintenance man. Enthralled with the bike he asked lots of questions about touring and the LHT specifically. He kept getting calls on his radio but continued to talk with me. Herb plans to live on his bike for a while and had been researching bicycles. I enthusiastically encouraged him since I know from experience that a lot of folks discourage that kind of crazy plan. Before he left to finally answer one of his calls, he asked me, "did you find the free showers?" I hadn't. Hohoho, that shower felt wonderful.
I spent a rest day at Furnace Creek and talked to Herb to 2 or 3 more times. I also met Mary and Paul from Rogue River, Oregon, who invited me to dinner at their campsite. I didn't carry a stove on this trip. The hot meal that Mary put together was the best meal of the trip. She had dried tomatoes and zucchini from their garden, a hot sauce with peppers that they grew, a jalepeno artichoke dip as an appetizer, and plenty of red wine. Was I ever a happy camper!
And on to Las Vegas
Back on the bike I rode south with a tailwind past Badwater all the way to the 5 miles of paved road that I had ridden between Saratoga Springs and Warm Springs Canyon over a week earlier. Instead of heading south to Baker I climbed Jubilee Pass. The following day I climbed Salsberry Pass on the coldest day of the trip. I simply couldn't warm up since I couldn't get away from the wind. And then I came to Tecopa Hot Springs! That cut the chill even though the wind was so fierce that I was dry within minutes of getting out of the pool. Around the corner I stopped at a RV park to get some water and ended up spending an hour talking with the 75-year-old man who runs the place with his wife. He ran an ultra-marathon when he was 55, had biked from Las Vegas to Sedona, had run a bunch of marathons. In the summer they leave Tecopa Hot Springs and explore the country in their 35' motorhome.
Later that afternoon I came upon Victor. Stopped at the side of the road, he handed me a Guinness and two granola bars. We chatted for a while using his car as a windbreak. He's taking a break from his 'round the world bicycle trip on a crazy rig that he built himself.
The following morning the only indication that I entered Nevada was a sign reading "Inyo County Line". Lower down on the same post was a smaller sign at an angle because it was falling off. That sign said "leaving". About 3 cars passed me in an hour, and then a car stopped. It was the couple from RV park in Tecopa Hot Springs. She had baked muffins that morning, put together a package of them for me, and handed them to me! They were still warm! Oh, I was cycling with a big smile yet again! I was on a gradual climb that continued all the way to Mountain Springs Pass. To get an idea of how long the climb was, consider that the couple drove all the way to Las Vegas, went to the dentist, drove back, and passed me just one minute before I crested the pass. They honked, smiled, and waved as did I. The first 2000' of descent was fast and cold, but I was warm and happy in my down coat.
My last excursion before Las Vegas was to ride through the scenic Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. The cliffs and cemented sand dunes in that area reminded me much more of the Colorado Plateau than anything I'd seen on my journey through the Mojave Desert. In the morning I rolled into Vegas, found a bike shop, boxed my stuff, and took a taxi to the downtown Greyhound station. In Denver a day later I rebuilt my bike at the Greyhound station for the short ride to Market St. Station. I took the bus to Boulder and rode through the snow to get home.
Signed for Route 36 EASTWICK and still painted in PTC green and cream, SEPTA-surface air-electric PCC 2050 (St Louis 1940) emerges from 40th & Woodland portal, Philadelphia PA 8-20-80. Prewar PCC's had air brakes (hence the air-electric label), lacked standee windows, and had the windshield at a much flatter angle than the postwar cars.
SEPTA-Surface all-electric PCC 2796 (St Louis 1947) still in PTC green & cream @ 40th & Woodland. 8-20-80
Quick-Look Hill-shaded Colour Relief Image of 2014 0.50m LIDAR Composite Digital Surface Model (DSM).
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The car that soldiered on through all manner of hell, and came out king of the hill in the end, whilst by extension keeping the company afloat.
During the early 1970's the craze was the supercar, the Lamborghini Countach had shown the world the 'Wedge' and given us a new idea of speed with its 200mph cruising velocity. Across the world, everyone wanted a piece of the new supercar action, with the result of many weird and wonderful retreads. In Britain, it was a mixed bag. At British Leyland, they gave us the Triumph TR7, which leaked, broke and generally failed to deliver in spades, whilst at Lotus, they gave us the Esprit, and that was the exact opposite.
Originally, the concept dated back to 1972 when a concept car by Lotus was unveiled, being designed by the world famous ItalDesign, built onto the platform of the previous Lotus Europa. In the following years the design was tinkered and altered by renowned stylish Giorgetto Giugiaro in one of his memorable 'Folded Paper' designs, a nickname for his more angular models such as the DeLorean and the Maserati Merak. At the time the name was initially intended to be named the Lotus Kiwi, but instead chose Esprit to keep with the long running Lotus tradition of naming cars with the letter 'E'.
However, unlike the massively powerful supercars that the Esprit was meant to be competing with, the car was designed to embody both power and incredible handling. The engine was a lightweight 2.0L Type-907 4-Cylinder engine, a comparatively small powerplant that produced 160hp. But even so, the car had a top speed of 138mph and a 0-60 of 6.8 seconds, which even today isn't bad and could easily combat the likes of the modern Hot Hatchbacks. This is due largely to the fact that the original Esprit was built out of Fibreglass on a steel backbone chassis.
The original car was launched in 1975 at the Paris Motor Show, and at the start was a little lukewarm in its reception. Although it was lauded for its incredible handling and ability to grip just about any surface, the low power engine meant that it didn't take-off as much as it had intended, especially in the desired American market.
Fame thankfully was not that far away. At the time of production the James Bond films were looking for a new Bond Car, as it had been nearly 10 years since 007 had been paired with a single iconic motor. Seeing the opportunity for some product placement, Lotus' head of public relations, Don McLaughlin, decided to take matters into his own hands and drive a prototype Lotus with all the Lotus badges taped over to Pinewood Studios near London and park it outside the main office before going across the way to meet a friend. Within a matter of minutes a sizeable crowd had gathered to ogle the sublime mystery car. Eventually he came back, made his way through the crowds, climbed in and drove away without a word being said. It was ambitious, but it worked, and the film crew went out of their way to find out about this car.
In the end a Lotus Esprit was featured in the 1977 film 'The Spy Who Loved Me', where it was shipped to Corsica and became the epic motor in the fantastic escape scene between Bond, several henchmen in cars and a pursuing helicopter. During filming however, the chase was originally quite uninteresting as the Lotus' famous grip meant that performing powerslides and drifts were impossible. This led to the Lotus test driver, who had accompanied the car to the film site, taking over from the stunt driver and literally flailing the car and pushing it to its very limits to try and make the chase look more exciting. From that moment on, he took over as stunt driver and can be owed for making the spectacular chase even more spectacular, finishing off with one of the more iconic parts of the movie where the Lotus flew off the end of a jetty and splashed into the sea, turning into a submarine to investigate Karl Stromberg's underwater rig. Although the Esprit's featured in the underwater sequences were a mixture of models and miniatures with alkasalsa tables causing bubbles, Top Gear's Richard Hammond was able to prove that a submarine car could be made out of a technically similar Lotus Excel, although it did require the doors being welded, the tyres being filled with cement, the windows being replaced with perspex and the fitting of external propellers.
When the Spy Who Loved Me premièred in 1977, the Lotus Esprit was rocketed to fame for it's intense scenes, and what would have been an unremarkable 70's sports car became one of the most iconic motors of the decade. But sadly the end of the 1970's brought trouble to the Lotus company. An Oil Crisis sent fuel costs rocketing, and the idea of owning gas guzzling supercars became highly undesirable. This was compounded by a global recession which saw the promising American market collapse. Lotus' production fell from 1,200 cars per year to just under 400, and the company was unable to pay for the development of new models, which meant that the 10 year old Elite and Eclat couldn't be replaced. In 1982 the company's founder and famed Racing Driver Colin Chapman died suddenly of a Heart Attack, and his later involvement in the DeLorean scandal, which would have seen him imprisoned for at least 10 years for fraud if he had lived to see the trial, damaged the company's reputation. In 1994 the Lotus F1 team folded and at one point the company was so strapped for cash that they couldn't even fill the invoices. The company was bounced between ownership by General Motors, and then Luxembourg based A.C.B.N Holdings, and finally to Proton of Malaysia. But despite everything, the Lotus Esprit just kept on going, and kept the company alive, thanks largely to constant development.
Unlike many car companies struggling in the recession which maintained the continuous model and made only a few cheap alterations such as facelifts, the Esprit was developed time and time again to make a more innovative machine, but maintaining that winning style that had made it so popular in the first place. Changes to the drivetrain, updates in the engine, slight alterations to the styling and a continued competitive price tag made it cheaper than a Ferrari but just as desirable, often being quoted as 'Britain's Ferrari'. Another part of its success was down to its designers too, the fourth generation car being designed by Peter Stevens, who would later coin the McLaren F1, the world's fastest production car until the Bugatti Veyron of 2005. The fifth and final generation car of 1993 however has often been described as the best, combining the continued obsession with unbelievable amounts of grip, steering and handling with a 3.5L Lotus Type 918 Turbo V8, giving the car a top speed of 178mph at a rate of 0-60 in 4.4 seconds, which even today is fantastic and would easily put it in line with modern supercars. In straight lines the Esprit would struggle to keep up in a race, but on the corners, whilst other cars would slide and flail, the Esprit would be glued to the line and easily outdo the likes of the Ferrari 458.
Sadly, this performance couldn't bring the Esprit back to its bloom of youth, and the 28 year old design was eventually killed off in 2004 after 10,000 examples were built, being replaced by the Exige. However, plans were considered for a new Esprit to be launched in 2013 after unveiling a concept at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, but this was unfortunately not pursued and development was instead put into the Evora. Today Esprits are quite rare like many sports cars of the time, with later versions from the 1990's and early 2000's being more common than the early S1 and S2 models of the 70's and 80's.
But either way, the Esprit proved to the world that Britain could make a competitive, and powerful sports car. Although it wasn't exactly built for straight lines, Britain isn't a country that consists of straight roads, if you're off the motorway you'd be pressed to find a route that didn't wind and curve in every given direction. This is where the Esprit could win and indeed went on to do, often being considered the best handling sports car of all time, and one that defied the financial struggle, the recession, the fuel crisis, the scandal, the multiple ownerships and the failure of the company F1 team!
Peziza repanda 'Spreading Brown Cup Fungus' is a cup shaped fungus when it is young but matures to a flat to undulating shape. The upper, fertile, surface is varying shades of brown and the lower surface is pale brown to white. Growing on a fallen poplar log. Rod Handfield's Acreage, West of Millarville, 5474August_17__2010
LAKE KIVU
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lake Kivu
Coordinates 2°0′S 29°0′ECoordinates: 2°0′S 29°0′E
Type Rift Valley lakes, Meromictic
Primary outflows Ruzizi River
Catchment area 2,700 km2 (1,000 sq mi)
Basin countries Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Max. length 89 km (55 mi)[1]
Max. width 48 km (30 mi)[1]
Surface area 2,700 km2 (1,040 sq mi)[1]
Average depth 240 m (787 ft)
Max. depth 480 m (1,575 ft)
Water volume 500 km3 (120 cu mi)
Surface elevation 1,460 m (4,790 ft)
Islands Idjwi
Settlements Goma, Congo
Bukavu, Congo
Kibuye, Rwanda
Cyangugu, Rwanda
Lake Kivu with Goma in the background
Lake Kivu is one of the African Great Lakes. It lies on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, and is in the Albertine Rift, the western branch of the East African Rift. Lake Kivu empties into the Ruzizi River, which flows southwards into Lake Tanganyika. The name comes from kivu which means "lake" in some Bantu languages, just like the words tanganyika or nyanza.[citation needed]
Contents
1 History
2 Geography
3 Chemistry
3.1 Methane extraction
4 Biology and fisheries
5 See also
6 References
History
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2012)
People on the shore at Gisenyi
The first European to visit the lake was German Count Adolf von Götzen in 1894. Since then it has been caught up in the conflict between Hutu and Tutsi people in Rwanda, and their allies in DR Congo, which led to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and the First and Second Congo Wars. Lake Kivu gained notoriety as a place where many of the victims of the genocide were dumped.
Geography
The lake covers a total surface area of some 2,700 km2 (1,040 sq mi) and stands at a height of 1,460 metres (4,790 ft) above sea level. Some 1 370 km2 or 58% of the lake's waters lie within DRC borders. The lake bed sits upon a rift valley that is slowly being pulled apart, causing volcanic activity in the area, and making it particularly deep: its maximum depth of 480 m (1,575 ft) is ranked eighteenth in the world.
The world's tenth-largest inland island, Idjwi, lies in Lake Kivu, as does the tiny island of Tshegera, which also lies within the boundaries of Virunga National Park; while settlements on its shore include Bukavu, Kabare, Kalehe, Sake, and Goma in Congo, and Gisenyi, Kibuye, and Cyangugu in Rwanda.
Chemistry
Lake Kivu is a fresh water lake and, along with Cameroonian Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun, is one of three that experience limnic eruptions. Around the lake, geologists found evidence of massive biological extinctions about every thousand years, caused by outgassing events. The trigger for lake overturns in Lake Kivu's case is unknown, but volcanic activity is suspected. The gaseous chemical composition of exploding lakes is unique to each lake; in Lake Kivu's case, methane and carbon dioxide due to lake water interaction with a volcano. The amount of methane is estimated to be 65 cubic kilometers (if burnt over one year, it would give an average power of about 100 gigawatts for the whole period). There is also an estimated 256 cubic kilometers of carbon dioxide. The water temperature is 24°C, and the pH level is about 8.6.[2] The methane is reported to be produced by microbial reduction of the volcanic CO2.[3] The risk from a possible Lake Kivu overturn is catastrophic, dwarfing other documented lake overturns at Lakes Nyos and Monoun, because of the approximately two million people living in the lake basin.
Cores from the Bukavu Bay area of the lake reveal that the bottom has layered deposits of the rare mineral monohydrocalcite interlain with diatoms, on top of sapropelic sediments with high pyrite content. These are found at three different intervals. The sapropelic layers are believed to be related to hydrothermal discharge and the diatoms to a bloom which reduced the carbon dioxide levels low enough to precipitiate monohydrocalcite.[4]
Scientists hypothesize that sufficient volcanic interaction with the lake's bottom water that has high gas concentrations would heat water, force the methane out of the water, spark a methane explosion, and trigger a nearly simultaneous release of carbon dioxide.[5][6] The carbon dioxide would then suffocate large numbers of people in the lake basin as the gases roll off the lake surface. It is also possible that the lake could spawn lake tsunamis as gas explodes out of it.[7][8]
The risk posed by Lake Kivu began to be understood during the analysis of more recent events at Lake Nyos. Lake Kivu's methane was originally thought to be merely a cheap natural resource for export, and for the generation of cheap power. Once the mechanisms that caused lake overturns began to be understood, so did awareness of the risk the lake posed to the local population.
An experimental vent pipe was installed at Lake Nyos in 2001 to remove gas from the deep water, but such a solution for the much larger Lake Kivu would be considerably more expensive. No plan has been initiated to reduce the risk posed by Lake Kivu.[dubious – discuss] The approximately 500 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the lake is a little under 2 percent of the amount released annually by human fossil fuel burning. Therefore the process of releasing it could potentially have costs beyond building and operating the system.
Methane extraction
Methane extraction platform.
Lake Kivu has recently been found to contain approximately 55 billion cubic metres (1.94 trillion cubic feet) of dissolved biogas at a depth of 300 metres (1,000 ft). Until 2004, extraction of the gas was done on a small scale, with the extracted gas being used to run boilers at a brewery, the Bralirwa brewery in Gisenyi.[9][10] As far as large-scale exploitation of this resource is concerned, the Rwandan government has negotiated with a number of parties to produce methane from the lake.
In 2011 ContourGlobal, a U.S. based energy company focused on emerging markets, secured project financing to initiate a large-scale methane extraction project. The project will be run through a local Rwandan entity called KivuWatt, using an offshore barge platform to extract, separate, and clean the gasses obtained from the lake bed before pumping purified methane via an underwater pipeline to on-shore gas engines. Stage one of the project aims to build and supply three "gensets" along the lake shore, totaling 25MW of electrical capacity. Initial project operations are scheduled to commence in 2012.[11] In addition to managing gas extraction, KivuWatt will also manage the electrical generation plants and on-sell the electrical power to the Rwandan government under the terms of a long-term Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). This allows KivuWatt to control a vertically integrated energy offering from point of extraction to point of sale into the local grid. Extraction is said to be cost-effective and relatively simple because once the gas-rich water is pumped up, the dissolved gases (primarily carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide and methane) begin to bubble out as the water pressure gets lower. This project is expected to increase Rwanda's energy generation capability by as much as 20 times, and will enable Rwanda to sell electricity to neighboring African countries.[10] The firm was awarded the 2011 Africa Power deal of the year for innovation in the financing arrangements it obtained from various sources for the KivuWatt project. [12] .[13]
A problem associated with the prevalence of methane is that of mazuku.
Biology and fisheries
Fishing boats on Lake Kivu, 2009.
Reflection of the sky on Lake Kivu
The fish fauna in Lake Kivu is relatively poor with 28 species, including four introduced species.[14] The natives are the Lake Rukwa minnow (Raiamas moorii), four species of Barbus (B. altianalis, B. apleurogramma, B. kerstenii and B. pellegrini), an Amphilius catfish, two Clarias catfish (C. liocephalus and C. gariepinus), Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) and 15 endemic Haplochromis cichlids.[14] The introduced species are three cichlids, the longfin tilapia (Oreochromis macrochir), O. leucostictus and redbreast tilapia (Coptodon rendalli), and a clupeid, the Lake Tanganyika sardine, Limnothrissa miodon.[14]
The exploitable stock of the Lake Tanganyika sardine was estimated at 2000–4000 tons per year.[15] It was introduced to Lake Kivu in the late 1959 by a Belgian Engineer A. Collart. At present, Lake Kivu is the sole natural lake in which L. miodon, a sardine originally restricted to Lake Tanganyika, has been introduced initially to fill an empty niche. Prior to the introduction, no planktivorous fish was present in the pelagic waters of Lake Kivu. In the early 1990s, the number of fishers on the lake was 6,563, of which 3,027 were associated with the pelagic fishery and 3,536 with the traditional fishery. Widespread armed conflict in the surrounding region from the mid-1990s resulted in a decline in the fisheries harvest.[16]
Following this introduction, the sardine has gained substantial economic and nutritional importance for the lakeside human population but from an ecosystem standpoint, the introduction of planktivorous fish may result in important modifications of plankton community structure. Recent observations showed the disappearance during the last decades of a large grazer, Daphnia curvirostris, and the dominance of mesozooplankton community by three species of cyclopoid copepod: Thermocyclops consimilis, Mesocyclops aequatorialis and Tropocyclops confinis.[17][18]
The first comprehensive phytoplankton survey was released in 2006.[19] With an annual average chlorophyll a in the mixed layer of 2.2 mg m-3 and low nutrient levels in the euphotic zone, the lake is clearly oligotrophic. Diatoms are the dominant group in the lake, particularly during the dry season episodes of deep mixing. During the rainy season, the stratified water column, with high light and lower nutrient availability, favour dominance of cyanobacteria with high numbers of phototrophic picoplankton.[19][20][21][22] The actual primary production is 0.71 g C m-2 d-1 (~ 260 g C m-2 y-1).[23]
A study of evolutionary genetics showed that the cichlids from lakes in northern Virunga (e.g., Edward, George, Victoria) would have evolved in a "proto-lake Kivu", much older than the intense volcanic activity (20,000-25,000 years ago) which cut the connection.[24] The elevation of the mountains west of the lake (which is currently the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, one of the largest reserves of eastern lowland (or Grauer's) gorillas in the world), combined with the elevation of the eastern rift (located in eastern Rwanda) would be responsible for drainage of water from central Rwanda in the actual Lake Kivu. This concept of "proto-lake Kivu" was challenged by lack of consistent geological evidence,[25] although the cichlid's molecular clock suggests the existence of a lake much older than the commonly cited 15,000 years.
Lake Kivu is the home of four species of freshwater crab, including two non-endemics (Potamonautes lirrangensis and P. mutandensis) and two endemics (P. bourgaultae and P. idjwiensis).[26] Among Rift Valley lakes, Lake Tanganyika is the only other with endemic freshwater crabs.[26]
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Microsoft Surface RT Tablet Hanging Stand V2
This is an Windows RT Hanging Stand with optional keyboard hooks. The "Windows RT Hanging Stand" was originally designed for a treadmill but could probably be used of a lot of other things including attaching back of car seat for kids to watch movies in the car, or handing on a door.
The optional keyboard I used is an Anker Ultra Slim Mini Bluetooth 3.0 Wireless Keyboard for iPad Mini / iPad / Nexus 7 / Galaxy Tab and other Tablets (Works with Windows RT).
Download and print on your 3D printer.
www.thingiverse.com/thing:157858
Photo taken by Michael Kappel
Taken many years ago at the London Wetland Centre.
Decided to have an experiment in black and white.
Surface Book - первый ноутбук от MicrosoftMicrosoft представил ноутбук с производительностью в два раза выше, чем у MacBook Air Pro.
Сюрпризом стало анонсирование компанией Microsoft своего первого ноутбука 6 октября 2015г. Создание Surface Book велось в атмос...