Lake Suguta
Starting with the Miocene, plate tectonics resulted in the pulling apart of the crust and the formation of the rift valley along with volcanoes; these include The Barrier volcano which starting from 1.3 million years ago and definitively from 0.2-0.1 million years ago separates Lake Suguta from Lake Turkana farther north.
[4] At highstand, Lake Suguta had a roughly rectangular shape with the long side trending north-northeast from Emuruangogolak volcano in the south to The Barrier in the north, and between the Loriu Plateau west and Tirr Tirr Plateau east of the valley.
[5] The lake covered a total area of 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi) and was about 300 metres (980 ft) deep.
[6] The Pliocene-Pleistocene Namarunu volcano[1] formed a peninsula on the western coast, while the Kamuge River valley at the southwestern end of the lake was occupied by a bay.
The Baragoi River drains the Tirr Tirr Plateau,[5] while the 175 kilometres (109 mi) long Suguta River drains an area of 13,000 square kilometres (5,000 sq mi) of the Kenya Rift valley almost all the way from Paka volcano close to the equator.
[21] In the early Holocene, an increase in the strength of the monsoon caused a wet period in northern Africa, the African Humid Period,[23] and the sizes of numerous lakes in East Africa were larger during the early Holocene 15,000 - 5,000 years ago than today.
[25] Other mechanisms also played a role,[23] seeing as the reconstructed changes in precipitation were considerably more abrupt than the actual changes in insolation.
[1] Further, humidity did not increase simultaneously in all places; locations farther north (such as the Omo River headwaters) reached maximum humidity (and thus maximum levels of the lakes fed by the rivers) later than locations farther south.
[3] This climate is a consequence of the annual migration of the ITCZ; however the moist air from the Congo Basin does not reach Lake Suguta and that along with the dryness of the Asian monsoon in East Africa explains the precipitation patterns.
[26] Bivalves,[27] freshwater snails, ostracods, oysters,[3] prosobranch gastropods[26] and stromatoliths occurred in Lake Suguta.
[2] Previously, the Suguta valley was connected to the Turkana basin[29] that was eventually split by growth of The Barrier about 200,000 years ago.
[32] Between 16,500 and 14,000 calibrated radiocarbon years ago Lake Suguta had an elevation of 535 metres (1,755 ft).
[25] Presently, the site of Lake Suguta is occupied by a broad valley and Lake Logipi (also named Namakat or Lukula[34]),[5] which is fed by the Suguta River as well as ephemeral river[2] and hot springs and whose surface varies from year to year.
