Dr Emma Tebbs of the Department of Geography at King’s College London has visited Lake Turkana in East Africa to carry out research on the sustainability of the lake ecosystem in the face of current developments. Check out the Geography Blog for more from Emma and other staff!
The lake is under threat from a hydropower dam and planned commercial irrigation schemes which will permanently alter the hydrological cycle of the lake and lead to significant declines in lake levels. The issue has received considerable international attention and it has been said to be another potential Aral Sea disaster in the making.
Dr Tebbs’s research has used satellite datasets to observe Lake Turkana from space and to predict the impacts of the Gibe III hydropower dam on the water quality and fisheries within the lake. The results have shown that the loss of seasonal inflows from the Omo River will cause a decline in the productivity of the lake with serious implications for the lake’s fisheries and the indigenous communities that depend on them. This work is being carried out as part of the MacArthur Foundation funded ‘Lake Turkana ecological/hydrological baseline’ project and whilst in the field Dr Tebbs teamed up with Dr Sean Avery, Principle Investigator for the project, who has carried out extensive studies of the lake’s hydrology.
With the support of DRIF funding from the King’s Geography Department, Dr Tebbs was able to undertake fieldwork at Lake Turkana in August this year, in order to collect ‘ground-truth’ measurements for validating satellite observations of water quality. The remote nature of the lake and the choppy conditions made fieldwork extremely challenging; nevertheless, the trip provided valuable new measurements that can now be used to validate existing satellite observations and to develop new methods for monitoring the lake using satellite data.
Dr Tebbs’s research focuses on the application of satellite remote sensing for addressing issues of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development, with a particular focus on East African lakes and their catchments. She also leads the Earth Observation and Environmental Sensing Research Hub at King’s College London, along with Professor Martin Wooster.
