Photos | Earth as art
Kilimanjaro, Kenya and Tanzania
Credit: NASA
Landsat 7 acquired this image of portions of Kenya and Tanzania in 2000. Featured on the far right is Mount Kilimanjaro, flanked by the plains of Amboseli National Park to the north and the rugged Arusha National Park to the south and west. Often called “The Shining Mountain,” Kilimanjaro is a dormant stratovolcano. It has three volcanic cones—Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira—and is the highest mountain in Africa. Although the mountain is located only about 300 kilometers from the equator, it has been capped by glaciers and snow for 11,000 years. This white cap shrinks and grows almost daily, and over the last century or more its overall trend has been a steady decline. The loss of Kilimanjaro’s ice cover can have both climatological and hydrological implications for local populations that depend on access to meltwater from the snow and ice as a source of freshwater during dry seasons and monsoon failures.
