Prepared as part of UNEP's contribution to the 11th World Lakes Conference (held in Nairobi, Kenya in November 2005), this publication examines the environmental changes taking place to Africa's lakes by analysing ground photographs, current and historical satellite images and scientific evidence. Changes highlighted include the rapid shrinking of Lake Songor in Ghana, partly as a result of intensive salt production, and the extraordinary changes in the Zambezi river system as a result of the building of the Cabora Basa dam site. Other impacts, some natural and some human-made and which can only be truly appreciated from space, include the extensive deforestation around Lake Nakuru in Kenya, and the falling water levels of Lake Victoria which is now about a metre lower than it was in the early 1990s. The analysis recognises the importance of Africa's lakes as a source of livelihoods for many local communities, their contribution to the socio-economic development of the continent and the need for the sustainable management of these resources in order to help overcome poverty and meet internationally agreed development goals by 2015.

This study uses newly acquired high-resolution seismic reflection data to present evidence of large-scale mass transport deposits throughout the Quaternary in southern Orphan Basin located off the northern slope of the Grand Banks. Mass transport deposits are those associated with slope failure and transport as slumps, slides, debris avalanches, or debris flows. The results reveal the types of mass transport deposits on the Basin slope & floor and their depositional pattern from the early Pleistocene to the present.