Welcome

Lake Kivu

Lake Kivu is situated in East Central Africa and lies on the border of its riparian countries, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. The Lake's surface covers 2370 km² and its volume amounts to 560 km³ with a maximum depth of 485 m. Its surrounding area offers home to about 2 million people.

Lake Kivu is considered to be an amazing and unique aquatic system in several respects. Not only is its water column strongly density stratified, the lake water also contains an estimated amount of 60 km³ of methane and 300 km³ of carbon dioxide. The extraordinarily high concentrations of these gases pose a severe risk to the riparian population in the event of uncontrolled degassing. However, the dissolved methane is also of economic interest since it is worth more than 20 billion dollars.

Purpose

This website gives an overview on the different projects which are conducted on Lake Kivu. The research carried out concerns the unique ecosystem as well as the methane extraction effort. A detailed list of publications offers insight into specific aspects of this fascinating lake.