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What is the Tonle Sap lake known for?
Tonle Sap Lake is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. Also called Boeung Tonle Sap, it has one of the world’s most vibrant ecosystems. There are different species of wildlife in and around the lake, which helped to sustain and grow the ancient Khmer civilization.
Why is Tonle Sap important?
The Tonle Sap and the inland waters system in Cambodia support some 500,000 tons of fish each year, and the flooded forests purify water and buffer communities from storms — an increasingly important benefit as climate change makes extreme weather more frequent.
Why the Tonle Sap is important to the people living on and around the Tonle Sap?
In Khmer, ‘Tonle’ means freshwater and ‘Sap’ means lake. In fact, the Tonle Sap is one of the most productive fishing lakes in the world, supporting over three million people and providing over 75 percent of Cambodia’s annual inland fish catch and 60 percent of Cambodians’ protein intake.
How is the Tonle Sap River different during the rainy season?
During raining season from June to October, the lake is fills with water flowing from the northward-flowing Mekong River and becomes 14 meters deep in some places and expands it surface area to around 10,000 square kilometers.
Why does the Tonle Sap river change directions?
Monsoon winds from the southwest bring a rainy season to Southeast Asia between May and October every year. The Mekong River swells so much that the Tonle Sap River is actually forced to flow backward, northward away from the sea. It’s the only river in the world that goes both ways.
Is Tonle Sap dirty?
But the silt deposited by the flow of the Mekong River, which nourishes the Tonle Sap’s abundance of fish that form a key source of food for millions of Cambodians, makes its brown, muddy waters unsuitable for daily use by households. Resident Keng Chin said the Tonle Sap water is too dirty even to wash clothes with.
Is Tonle Sap a natural lake?
“Fresh River” or commonly translated as “Great Lake”) is a seasonally inundated freshwater lake, Tonlé Sap Lake, and an attached river, the 120 km (75 mi) long Tonlé Sap River, that connects the lake to the Mekong River….
| Tonlé Sap | |
|---|---|
| Settlements | Siem Reap, Battambang |
Why the Tonle Sap Great lake is flooded each year?
Fisheries and food security of the population have been affected. Satellite imaging suggested the low water levels during 2019 was driven by a particular severe drought and was exacerbated by the withholding of water in hydropower dams in China.
Why does the Tonle Sap River change directions?
Why does the Tonle Sap flood?
In 2019, a combination of climate change, El Niño and dams on the Mekong and its tributaries caused the Tonle Sap River to reverse in August rather than June and for only six weeks instead of the usual five to six months. The resulting shallow, warm, oxygen-starved waters devastated the fisheries.
What makes the Tonle Sap River different from almost every other river?
Why the Tonle Sap River Is Unlike Any Other River in the World. The river used to flow east into Lake Michigan, carrying sewage into the city’s water supply after rainstorms and causing cholera and typhoid outbreaks. So the city dug a 28-mile canal that made the river flow west instead, as it still does today.
Why is the water brown in Cambodia?
The fast-flowing river is a source of fish and helps transport sediments across the region, improving soil fertility for farmers. The sediments also give the river its signature muddy brown appearance.
Is the Tonle Sap a river or a lake?
In Khmer, tonle literally means large river and sap is fresh or not salty. Thus, Tonle Sap can be understood as the large freshwater river. In Cambodia, the Tonle Sap Lake which is well-known as Great Lake is the combination of lake and river system.
Why is the Tonle Sap important to Vietnam?
The reversal of the Tonlé Sap River’s flow also acts as a safety valve to prevent flooding further downstream. During the dry season (December to April) Tonlé Sap Lake provides around 50 percent of the flow to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.
How often does the Tonle Sap reverse its flow?
That is to say, its flow of water reverses every six months out of the year, causing the lake to swell to an astonishing five times its size between the wet and dry seasons. And like a living, breathing organism, its residents have skillfully adapted to the Tonle Sap’s rhythmic, annual inhalation of water, flora and fauna.
Why is Tonle Sap important to the food web?
Because sediment contains nutrients that fuel food webs, the Tonlé Sap benefits from the influx. Sediment-bound phosphorus serves as food for phytoplankton through higher plants, and research has shown that the metabolizing of the chemical contributes to food abundance and quality.