It is one of the smallest and least known lakes in Kenya, but its sediments are able to provide invaluable information about the history of the Earth, its geological and climatic evolution, and provide scientists with important data on 150,000 years of variations in the Earth's magnetic field.
This is Lake Chala, a small, unspoiled gem in Kenya, just a few kilometers from the Tanzanian border and the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Located between the towns of Taveta and Loitokitok, Chala is a crater four kilometers in diameter surrounded by greenery. Very deep and extraordinarily blue, it offers a landscape of captivating beauty, completely unexpected from the plains below.
Chala is frequented only by a few friendly fishermen in their shelters and is spiritually significant, with stories of lake monsters that are part of local folklore.
From the edge of the 100-meter-high crater, there is a steep descent to the lake, and on the way down you can spot various species of lizards, baboons, and monkeys, and if you're lucky, dik-diks and bushbabies.
An excellent place for birdwatching, the bird list includes more than 250 species, including peregrine falcons, which nest in the rocky walls of Chala.
The lake is filled and drained by underground streams fed by water flowing from the Kilimanjaro area.
The studies, carried out in collaboration with the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology and the University of Ghent in Belgium, were published in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems by the University of Lancaster in the UK.
After a series of drilling projects as part of an international program, analyzing the 129 meters of sediment extracted, the researchers were able to reconstruct the history of the Earth's magnetic field in the region.
“Thanks to this study, we have obtained a detailed picture of the variations in the magnetic field in an area crucial to the history of human evolution,” explained Anita Di Chiara, an Italian researcher at the Belgian institute, to ANSA. ”East Africa is considered one of the areas from which hominids left to populate the rest of the world, perhaps precisely because of extreme climatic events.” According to the researcher, the results of the research not only improve scholars' understanding of the evolution of the Earth, but also provide a methodological basis for future studies in other equatorial regions and the southern hemisphere.