[4] In 1894, German officer and colonial ruler Gustav Adolf von Götzen was the first recorded European to visit the lake.

About 13,000 to 9,000 years ago, volcanic activity blocked Lake Kivu's outlet to the watershed of the Nile.

[4] The lake bed sits upon a rift valley that is slowly being pulled apart, causing volcanic activity in the area.

Settlements on the lake's shore include Bukavu, Kabare, Kalehe, Sake and Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Gisenyi, Kibuye, and Cyangugu in Rwanda.

Around the lake, geologists[7][verification needed] found evidence of massive local extinctions about every thousand years, presumably caused by outgassing events.

The lake also holds an estimated 256 cubic kilometres (61 cu mi) of carbon dioxide which, if released in an eruption event, could suffocate all of the inhabitants of the lakeshore.

[9] Cores from the Bukavu Bay area of the lake reveal that the bottom has layered deposits of the rare mineral monohydrocalcite interlaid with diatoms, on top of sapropelic sediments with high pyrite content.

The sapropelic layers are believed to be related to hydrothermal discharge and the diatoms to a bloom which reduced the carbon dioxide levels low enough to precipitate monohydrocalcite.

[19][20] As far as large-scale exploitation of this resource is concerned, the Rwandan government has negotiated with a number of parties to extract methane from the lake.

The project is run through a local Rwandan entity called KivuWatt, using an offshore barge platform to extract, separate, and clean the gasses obtained from the lake bed before pumping purified methane via an underwater pipeline to onshore gas engines.

Stage one of the project, powering three "gensets" along the lake shore and supplying 26 MW of electricity to the local grid, has since been completed.

[20] The firm was awarded the 2011 Africa Power deal of the year for innovation in the financing arrangements it obtained from various sources for the KivuWatt project.

Recent observations showed the disappearance during the last decades of a large grazer, Daphnia curvirostris, and the dominance of mesozooplankton community by three species of cyclopoid copepod: Thermocyclops consimilis, Mesocyclops aequatorialis and Tropocyclops confinis.

[36] With an annual average chlorophyll in the mixed layer of 2.2 mg m−3 and low nutrient levels in the euphotic zone, the lake is clearly oligotrophic.

[40] A study of evolutionary genetics showed that the cichlids from lakes in northern Virunga (e.g., Edward, George, Victoria) would have evolved in a "proto-lake Kivu", much older than the intense volcanic activity (20,000-25,000 years ago) which cut the connection.

This concept of "proto-lake Kivu" was challenged by lack of consistent geological evidence,[42] although the cichlid's molecular clock suggests the existence of a lake much older than the commonly cited 15,000 years.

Lake Kivu is the home of four species of freshwater crab, including two non-endemics (Potamonautes lirrangensis and P. mutandensis) and two endemics (P. bourgaultae and P.

Between May and July 2020, Rwanda Police Marine Unit operations reported 27 cases including 10 arrested poachers for illegal fishing on the lake.