Editing Lake Chad (section)

==Ecology==
[[File:Kanał doprowadzający do jeziora - Jezioro Czad - 001269s.jpg|thumb|275px|[[Lake Chad flooded savanna]]]]
Part of the Chad Basin is located within the [[Chad Basin National Park]] in Nigeria, and the country and Cameroon have established the Lake Chad Ramsar Wetland with a total area of {{convert|8225|km2|sqmi|abbr=on}}.<ref name=tgd1/>

===Plantlife===
The wetland plants in the south mainly include [[cyperus papyrus]], etc. [[Reed (plant)|Reeds]] mainly grow in the north where the salinity is high, and the floating plant [[pistia]] sometimes covers large areas of open water. Plants such as [[hyparrhenia rufa]] grow on the shores of lakes with long floods in the south.<ref name=tgd1/> The area of permanent vegetation has increased from about {{convert|3800|km2|sqmi|abbr=on}} in 2000 to about {{convert|5200|km2|sqmi|abbr=on}} in 2020 as water levels have dropped and temperatures have increased.<ref>{{cite journal |author1=Binh Pham-Duc |author2=Florence Sylvestre |author3=Fabrice Papa |author4=Frédéric Frappart |author5=Camille Bouchez |author6=Jean-Francois Crétaux |title=The Lake Chad hydrology under current climate change |journal=Scientific Reports |date=2020 |volume=10 |issue=5498 |page=5498 |doi=10.1038/s41598-020-62417-w|doi-access=free |pmid=32218517 |pmc=7099084 }}</ref> The surrounding dense woodland has been converted to open forest with [[acacias]], [[baobabs]], [[Arecaceae|palms]] and [[Indian jujube]].<ref name=w2/>

===Birds===
The lake has been designated an [[Important Bird Area]] (IBA) by [[BirdLife International]].<ref name=bli>{{cite web |url= https://datazone.birdlife.org/site/factsheet/lake-chad-iba-chad|title= Lake Chad |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=2024|website= BirdLife Data Zone|publisher= BirdLife International|access-date= 2024-10-30}}</ref> It is permanently or seasonally inhabited by hundreds of species of birds such as [[northern shoveler]], [[Egyptian goose]] and [[marabou stork]].<ref name=w2/> It is an important wintering ground for European [[anatidae]] and wading birds. There are raptors such as [[steppe eagle]] and [[booted eagle]] on the lakeshore,<ref name=tgd1>{{cite web |author1=Emma Martin |author2=Neil Burgess |title=Lake Chad Flooded Savanna |url=https://www.oneearth.org/ecoregions/lake-chad-flooded-savanna/ |website=www.oneearth.org |accessdate=2023-07-15 |archive-date=15 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230715052429/https://www.oneearth.org/ecoregions/lake-chad-flooded-savanna/ |url-status=live }}</ref> and more than one million [[Ruff (bird)|ruff]] can be observed on the lake at one time.<ref name=4j>{{cite report |last1=Keith |first1=J. O. |last2=Plowes |first2=D. C. H. |title=Considerations of Wildlife Resources and Land Use in Chad |date=March 1997 |page=3 |url=https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNABZ699.pdf |docket=SD Technical Paper No. 45 |publisher=Office of Sustainable Development, Africa Bureau, USAID |archive-date=2023-06-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230618010146/https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNABZ699.pdf |language=en}}</ref>

===Mammals===
The once common large mammals include [[red-fronted gazelle]], [[dama gazelle]], [[patas monkey]], [[striped hyena]], [[cheetah]] and [[caracal]], while [[African elephant]], [[otter]], [[hippopotamus]], [[sitatunga]] and [[kob]] are distributed in the wetlands. At present, most of the large mammals have been hunted to extinction, replaced by a large number of cattle.<ref name=tgd1/>

===Fish===
The entire Chad Basin has 179 species of fish, of which 127 are the same as the Niger River Basin, 85 are the same as the Nile River Basin, 47 are the same as the [[Congo River Basin]], and 84 fish species are distributed in the lake.<ref name=hd3>{{cite book |last1=Hughes |first1=R. H. |last2=Hughes |first2=J. S. |year=1992 |title= A Directory of African Wetlands |publisher=[[IUCN]] / [[UNEP]] / [[World Conservation Monitoring Centre|WCMC]] |isbn=2-88032-949-3 |pages=329–330 |url=https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/1992-007.pdf |language=en |url-status=live |access-date=2023-06-14 |archive-date=2012-09-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120924181446/http://ramsar.wetlands.org/Portals/15/CHAD.pdf }}</ref> This makes it a rich fishing ground for communities across Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. The seasonal influx of floods combined with seasonal increases in air temperature leads to decreased salinity, increased turbidity, and increased trophic levels, which catalyzed a surge in the number of phytoplankton and zooplankton, allowing large fish to migrate seasonally within the watershed to feed and breed in the fertile floodplain when floods arrive.<ref name=h8/>