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Lake Magadi

Lake Magadi is the southermost lake in the Kenyan Rift Valley, lying north east of Lake Natron. During the dry season, it is 80% covered by soda and is well known for its wading birds, including flamingos.

It is a saline, alkaline lake, approximately 100 square kilometers in size, that lies in a graben. The lake is an example of a "saline pan". The lake water, which is a dense sodium carbonate brine, precipitates vast quanitites of the mineral called trona (sodium sesquicarbonate). In places, the salt is up to 40 m thick. The lake is recharged mainly by saline hot springs (up to about 83°C), there being little surface runoff in this arid region. Most hot springs lie along the northwestern and southern shorelines of the lake. During the rainy season a thin (<1 m) layer of brine covers much of the saline pan, but this evaporates rapidly leaving a vast expanse of white salt that cracks to produce large polygons. A single species of fish, a cichlid called Alcolapia grahami, inhabits the hot, highly alkaline waters of this lake basin. Lake Magadi was not always so saline. Several thousand years ago (during the late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene) the Magadi basin held a freshwater lake with many fish, whose remains are preserved in the High Magadi Beds, a series of lacustrine and volcaniclastic sediments preserved in various locations around the present shoreline. Evidence also exists for several older Pleistocene precursor lakes that were much larger than present Lake Magadi.

Magadi township lies on the lake's east shore, and is home to the Magadi Soda factory, now owned by Tata India. This factory produces soda ash, which has a range of industrial uses.

The lake is featured in Fernando Meirelles's film The Constant Gardener, which is based on the book of the same name by John Le Carré, although in the film the shots are supposed to be at Lake Turkana.

A causeway that crosses the lake provides access to the area west of the lake (Nguruman Escarpment).

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Coordinates: 1°52′S, 36°16′E