Congo Basin
Basin · 3.11M km²
Congo Basin is a basin in Africa, covering an estimated 3.11M km². It extends across the DR Congo, the Central African Republic, Angola, the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, South Sudan, Sudan, Burundi, Gabon, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia. It is the 11th-largest of the 231 landforms with a mapped extent in YearMaps.
The Congo Basin is the sedimentary basin of the Congo River. The Congo Basin is located in Central Africa, in a region known as west equatorial Africa. The region is sometimes known simply as the Congo. It contains some of the largest tropical rainforests in the world and is an important source of water used in agriculture and energy generation.
The rainforest in the Congo Basin is the largest rainforest in Africa and second only to the Amazon rainforest in size, with 300 million hectares compared to the 800 million hectares in the Amazon. Because of its size and diversity the basin's forest is important for mitigating climate change in its role as a carbon sink. However, deforestation and degradation of the ecology by the impacts of climate change may increase stress on the forest ecosystem, in turn making the hydrology of the basin more variable. A 2012 study finds that the variability in precipitation caused by climate change will negatively affect economic activity in the basin.
Eight sites of the Congo Basin are inscribed on the World Heritage List, five being also on the list of World Heritage in Danger (all five located in Democratic Republic of the Congo).
Adapted from Wikipedia: Congo Basin (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Feature class
- Basin
- Mapped extent
- 3.11M km²
- Size rank
- #11 of 231 landforms
- Region
- Africa
- Countries
- DR Congo, Central African Republic, Angola, Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, South Sudan, Sudan, Burundi, Gabon, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia
- Coordinates
- -0.6351°, 21.4534°
- Ranges:
- Ruwenzori Range (Africa), Marrah Mountains (Africa)
More about Congo Basin
Geology
The Congo Basin is a large depression within the Congo Craton, making it a patch of relatively recent (Phanerozoic-aged, and mostly Mesozoic and onwards) sedimentary rock within a large, otherwise ancient (Archean-aged) piece of exposed continental crust. The deformation of the craton began as early as the late Cambrian or early Ordovician and continued over the Paleozoic, but the deformation over this period led to rapid erosion of much of the Paleozoic rock, creating a large unconformity. Sediment started to rapidly accumulate in the basin from the Mesozoic (Triassic) up to the present day.
Deposits throughout the Jurassic suggest the presence of a freshwater, lacustrine habitat in the basin, and this continued into the Early Cretaceous.
Climate
The Congo Basin is a globally important climatic region with annual rainfall of between 1,500 to 2,000 millimetres (59 to 79 in). It is one of three hotspots of deep convection (thunderstorms) in the tropics, the other two being over the Maritime continent and the Amazon. These three regions together drive the climate circulation of the tropics and beyond. The Congo Basin has the highest lightning strike frequency of anywhere on the planet. The high rainfall supports the second-largest rainforest on Earth, which is a globally significant carbon sink and an important component of the global carbon cycle.
Averaged across the basin, there are two major rainfall seasons in March to May and September to November.
Ecology and protection
At a global level, Congo's forests act as the planet's second lung, counterpart to the rapidly dwindling Amazon. They are a huge "carbon sink", trapping carbon that could otherwise remain carbon dioxide. The Congo Basin holds roughly 8% of the world's forest-based carbon. Despite this importance, it gets far less scientific attention than the Amazon or the tropical forests of South East Asia. If these woodlands are deforested, the carbon they trap will be released into the atmosphere. Predictions for future unabated deforestation estimate that by 2050 activities in the DRC will release roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide as the United Kingdom has emitted over the last 60 years. A 2013 study by British scientists shows that deforestation in the Congo Basin rainforest is slowing.
History
The first inhabitants of the Congo Basin area were believed to be pygmies, and at that time, the dense forests and wet climate kept the population of the region low, with the prevention of hunter-gatherer society, whose remnants of their culture survive to the present day. Eventually Bantu peoples migrated there and founded the Kingdom of Kongo.Belgium, France, and Portugal later established colonial control over the entire region by the late 19th century.
Sections adapted from Wikipedia: Congo Basin (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Congo Basin: Key Facts
| Area | 1,000,000 km² |
|---|---|
| Highest point | Mount Karisimbi |
| On | River Congo |
Facts from Wikidata Q932289 (CC0).