Mount Kilimanjaro.Volcano found in the national park of Tanzania . It has an altitude of 5,895 meters, which makes it the highest mountain in Africa and one of the highest volcanoes in the world. It is a stratovolcano formed by three craters with perpetual snow, due to the glacier that exists at the top in recent years the thickness of the ice has acceleratedly decreased.
Summary
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- 1 History
- 2 Activity and eruption phase
- 3 Type of volcano
- 4 Climate and temperature
- 5 Flora and fauna
- 6 Sources
History
It is a volcano with a lot of history and surrounded by mysticism.
- Before the 19th century , some accounts such as the one made by the Egyptian geographer Ptolemy mention the existence of a “white mountain” in southern Africa .
- In 1845 , the British geographer William Cooley, insurance existence, ensures the best known mountain Africa of the East , called Kirimanjara, is covered with red rocks.
- In May 1848, a German missionary, Johannes Rebmann, explored the region and as he approached the mountain he recounted: “Around 10 o’clock, I saw something white on the top of a high mountain and I thought it was clouds, but my guide He tells me it was cold, so I recognized with satisfaction this old European companion that we call snow. “
- It took until 1861 for an expedition, led by the German baron Klaus von der Decken and the English botanist Richard Thornton, to verify that it is indeed a snowy peak, which was reached for the first time, after several failures , by Hans Meyer on October 6 , 1889 .
- At present, Kilimanjaro is protected by a national park, which was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1987.
- The melting of the glaciers on the summit of Kilimanjaro is a reality. Estimated at 12 km² around 1900 , today they do not cover more than 2 km² and at this rate they will have disappeared by 2020. Global warming of the Earth is not enough to explain this phenomenon. It can also come from a slow reactivation of volcanic activity, which is manifested by some fumaroles.
- The ascent is technically easy, but long and painful due to the cold and the altitude. The most popular route is Marangu. The other routes practiced are the Machame, Mweka, and Shira routes. Approximately 20,000 hikers attempt to reach the summit every year.
Activity and eruption phase
It is a dormant volcano, it erupted in 1997 .
Volcano type
Stratovolcano. It is a triple volcano, that is, it has three craters: the Kibo, the Shira and the Mawenza.
Climate and temperature
The climate is equatorial and the minimum temperature of 15 ° C and the maximum 36 °. At the top there are permanent ice and temperatures below zero.
Flora and fauna
It is rich in rivers and the vegetation is tropical forest and permanent grasses, mosses and lichens. There are almost no animals; there is the mountain gorilla, which is an endangered species.
