Lake Nakuru: The Collapse of the World's Greatest Flamingo Lake

Lake Nakuru in Kenya once held nearly a million lesser flamingos, the densest concentration of birds on Earth. By 2021, almost all of them were gone. This is the story of a closed alkaline basin, the cyanobacteria that thrived within it, and how the slow degradation of a watershed was recorded in the water itself. 00:00 The Collapse (1972 to 2021) 00:44 The Chemistry of a Soda Lake 07:12 The Flamingo Ecosystem 10:24 The Flood and the Mau Forest 14:18 What Remains (The Indicator System) Sources and Further Reading: The data in this video is drawn from longitudinal aerial surveys of the Kenya Lake System, UNESCO World Heritage documentation, and limnological studies regarding endorheic basin chemistry and Arthrospira fusiformis biomass. UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Kenya Lake System in the Great Rift Valley https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1060 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP): Deterioration of the Mau Forest Complex and the impact on downstream lakes https://www.unep.org/resources/report... Mbote, Beth Wambui (2016): "Assessing The Impacts Of Climate Variability And Climate Change On Biodiversity In Lake Nakuru, Kenya." (Comprehensive study on the lake's ecology, flamingo populations, and the impact of water level fluctuations) https://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/items... IUCN Flamingo Specialist Group: Population dynamics and migration of the Lesser Flamingo in East Africa https://iucn.org/our-union/commission... About this channel: Route +2 explores the geography, ecology, and hidden systems shaping our world. Subscribe for more deep-dive video essays:    / @routeplustwo   Full list of music, sound effects, video clips, and image attributions for this video can be found at this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S...