Lake Alaotra

Where is Lake Alaotra?

Countries on its shores: Madagascar.

Largest lake of: Madagascar.

Middle of the lake: 17.50° S, 48.50° E

The story behind it

No other lake on the whole island of Madagascar is as big as Lake Alaotra. Yet it is only about 1.5 metres deep at most, and in the dry season often only about 60 centimetres. Its size changes a lot: in the rainy season, floods spread over about 350 km² of extra land. Around the lake lies Madagascar's most important rice-growing region, and every year farmers here harvest about 200 000 tonnes of rice. In the reed beds lives a very special animal, the Alaotra bamboo lemur, which local people call bandro. It lives nowhere else, and it is the only primate in the world that lives only in reed beds. But the lake is in danger. Forests on the hills were cut down, so rain washes soil into the water, and the lake is slowly filling with mud. A water bird called the Alaotra grebe, which lived only here, has most likely died out.

Find it on the globe

Lake Alaotra is there as a small blue dot with its name, right on the water. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.