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Lake Bunyonyi
The lake was formed due to a combination of intense
rifting and back tilting of the landscape by earth
movements that occurred in this area during the Tertiary
times, in association with formation of the Western Rift
valley in East Africa; and later the volcanic lava damming
of rivers flowing on the raised and tilted landscape. As a
result, Lake Bunyonyi occupies one of the deepest and
long winding narrow valleys, characteristic of this Kigezi
region and a reminiscent of the intense Tertiary rifting
in this part of the country. The entire lake is encircled
by towering ridges and hills, with very steep slopes that
abruptly drop to the very narrow lake shores. Water from
rivers filled a drowned deep and moderately wide streak
valley which was then dammed by lava to form one of
the deepest lakes in Africa. The lake covers an area of 46
km
2
and has an average depth of 39m (Langlands 1974).
Aerial view of Kabale-Iyamuriro wetland
94
Credit......................
NEMA 2007