Africa Past and present
June 11, 2008—Satellite images from 1972 (left) and 2007 (right) show water-level decline in Lake Chad, once the world's sixth largest.
At the junction of Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, the lake is now one-tenth its former size, due to declining rainfall and diversion of water for human use.
Africa's most populous urban area, Cairo, Egypt, is shown in 1972 (left) and 2005 (right).
An exploding population has driven the city's expansion, encroaching on much of the precious arable land surrounding the Nile River, according to a UN atlas released June 11, 2008.
The depletion of Guinea's resource-rich coastal zone is illustrated in satellite images from 1975 (left) and 2007.
The population of the Kaloum Peninsula (lower left in both images) tripled between 1963 and 1996, according to a UN atlas released June 11, 2008.
Guinea's coastal zone is home to one-fourth of West Africa's mangroves. But spreading cities are destroying the trees, which help keep shorelines stable and serve as nurseries for fish
Mali's Lake Faguibine (top in both images) virtually disappeared between 1974 (left) and 2006.
The lake's water levels have varied widely over the last hundred years. But an extended dry period in the 1980s caused the lake to disappear completely in the 1990s, according to a UN atlas released June 11, 2008.
The lake has not been able to recover, despite normal rainfall in recent years, according to the atlas.
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