Rwenzori Mountains


The Ruwenzori, also spelled Rwenzori and Rwenjura, are a range of mountains in eastern equatorial Africa, located on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The highest peak of the Ruwenzori reaches, and the range's upper regions are permanently snow-capped and glaciated. Rivers fed by mountain streams form one of the sources of the Nile, for which reason during the European exploration of Africa, the Ruwenzori came to be identified with the legendary Mountains of the Moon, identified by the Greek scholar Ptolemy as the source of the Nile. Virunga National Park in the Congo and Rwenzori Mountains National Park in Uganda are located within the range.

Geology

The mountains formed about three million years ago in the late Pliocene epoch and are the result of an uplifted block of crystalline rocks including gneiss, amphibolite, granite and quartzite.
This uplift divided the paleolake Obweruka and created three of the present-day African Great Lakes: Lake Albert, Lake Edward, and Lake George.
The range is about long and wide. It consists of six massifs separated by deep gorges: Mount Stanley, Mount Speke, Mount Baker, Mount Emin, Mount Gessi and Mount Luigi di Savoia. Mount Stanley has several subsidiary summits, with Margherita Peak being the highest point.

Human history

The mountains are occasionally identified with the legendary "Mountains of the Moon", depicted in antiquity as the source of the Nile River.
Photographer Vittorio Sella took a number of photographs of the Ruwenzori Mountains during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, documenting the retreat of the range's glaciers. Sella's photographic work is conserved at the Museo Nazionale della Montagna in Turin and at the Istituto di Fotografia Alpina Vittorio Sella in Biella, both in Italy. The Makerere University, Uganda, also has a selection of his images.
The first traverse of the six massifs of the Ruwenzori was done in 1975, starting on 27 January and ending on 13 February. The traverse was done by Polish climbers Janusz Chalecki, Stanisław Cholewa and Leszek Czarnecki, with Mirosław Kuraś accompanying them on the last half of the traverse.

Natural history

Flora

The Ruwenzori are known for their vegetation, ranging from tropical rainforest through alpine meadows to snow. The range supports its own species and varieties of giant groundsel and giant lobelia and even has a tall heather covered in moss that lives on one of its peaks. Most of the range is now a World Heritage Site and is covered jointly by Rwenzori Mountains National Park in southwestern Uganda and the Virunga National Park in the eastern Congo.
There is no water shortage in the Ruwenzori; yet, several members of the afro-alpine family resemble species that normally thrive in desert climates. The reason lies in their similar water economy. Water is not always readily available to the afroalpine plants when they need it. In addition, nightly frosts affect the sap transport in the plants and the intake of water by its roots. As the day begins, the air temperature and radiation level rise rapidly, putting strenuous demands on the exposed parts of the plants as they try to meet the transpiration demands of the leaves and maintain a proper water balance. To counter the effects of freezing, the afro-alpine plants have developed the insulation systems that give them such a striking appearance. These adaptations become more prominent as the elevation increases.
There are five overlapping vegetation zones in the Ruwenzori: the evergreen forest zone ; the bamboo zone ; the heather zone ; the alpine zone ; and, the nival zone. At higher elevations, some plants reach an unusually large size, such as lobelia and groundsels. The vegetation in the Ruwenzori is unique to equatorial alpine Africa.
Sources:

Glacial recession

An ongoing concern is the impact of climate change on the Ruwenzori's glaciers. In 1906, forty-three named glaciers were distributed over six mountains with a total area of, about half the total glacier area in Africa. By 2005, less than half of these were still present, on only three mountains, with an area of about. Recent scientific studies, such as those by Richard Taylor of University College London, have attributed this retreat to global climate change and have investigated the impact of this change on the mountain's vegetation and biodiversity.