Water, Migration and the Serengeti Ecosystem

Wolanski, Eric and Gereta, Emmanuel and Borner, Markus and Mduma, Simon

1999

• Publisher: American Scientist
• Edition: Vol 87 p526-532
• Our classification: Natural history
• external link
• Abstract:
  Each year roughly one million wildebeests, 300,000 zebras and a similar number of gazelles migrate across Serengeti National Park in one of earth's largest annual movements of herbivores. Although it has long been recognized that this migration corresponds roughly to the wet and dry seasons, the exact timing of the move varies by months and has resisted prediction. By modeling rainfall, river-discharge, water-quality and migration-timing data, the authors argue that water quality, rather than quantity, controls the timing of the annual migration. Their research has led them to develop a simple numerical model based on initial water salinity and rainfall that predicts the timing of the migration with great accuracy.

Book ID 676