![]() ![]() The natron content in the lake has given it a pH level of about 10.5 which is comparable to that of ammonia. The substance enters the lake through material eroding from the surrounding hills. If they fall into the lake, that's where they'll stay, encased in salty cement, until Natron decides it's time to let them go. The nature of the lake comes from a chemical called natron which is a mixture of sodium carbonate and baking soda. Even in a good year, some flamingos that make the trip will die. If the water level's just right, they court on the temporary salt islands and make mud nests from volcanic dust. So, after feasting on spirulina algae from nearby lagoons, the flamingos flock to this barren wasteland. Except for one extreme-living bacterium, nothing lives in the eerily still Natron, which drives away other larger animals that would stop by to feed or fish. The deadliness of Lake Natron is exactly what makes it a peaceful mating spot for the flamingos. The water would "strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds," Brandt said. Other volcanoes usually spew silicates, but the Ol Doinyo Lengai is the only one on the planet that spills "natrocarbonatites" as cool, runny, dark washes.Īshy runoff collected by rainwater winds up in the lake, which explains why the washed-up animals look like they've been dropped in a bucket of cement. It's a favorite among petrologists because it's the only one of its kind, Hannes Mattsson, a researcher at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, told NBC News. The culprit is Ol Doinyo Lengai, a million-year old volcano just south of Lake Natron. Nick Brandt / Courtesy of Hasted Kraeutler Gallery A calcified dove, from Nick Brandt's book Across The Ravaged Land, published by Abrams, New York. How did the lake get this hostile? The "salt" in it isn't the regular table variety harvested from seawater, but magmatic limestone that's been forged deep in the Earth, poured out in runny lava flows and blasted into the air to become ash clouds 10 miles high. Water levels fluctuate easily because it's so hot - when the levels drop, the corpses are left behind on the shores, coated in salt, exactly how Brandt found them. It receives mineral-rich water from hot springs and the Southern Ewaso Ngiro River, which originates from central Kenya. Small birds or bats that try and fail to cross the 12- by 30-mile lake fall in, as do insects like beetles and locusts. Lake Natron is located in the Arusha region in northern Tanzania. Nick Brandt / Courtesy of Hasted Kraeutler Gallery Two and a half million Lesser Flamingos may lose their breeding grounds at Lake Natron if plans go ahead to build a soda extraction facility on the lake. Flamingos are some of the lucky birds that can make the trip across the lake which is 30-miles wide at its longest point. Home to 2.5 million Lesser Flamingo, Lake Natron is the birds only breeding ground in East Africa. "If a body falls anywhere else it decomposes very quickly, but on the edge of the lake, it just gets encrusted in salt and stays forever," David Harper, an ecologist at the University of Leicester who has visited Lake Natron four times, told NBC News.
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