Dictionary

kirta en · NOUN

Etymology

From or related to Kanuri kə́rtá (“floating island”).

Meanings

1. A floating island on Lake Chad.
   • The kirtas were very numerous … until 1967 … These islands disappeared fairly quickly when the average level of the lake decreased below 282 m. 1983, Andre Iltis, Jacques Lemoalle, The Aquatic Vegetation of Lake Chad, in Lake Chad: Ecology and Productivity of a Shallow Tropical Ecosystem (edited by Cannouze, Durand and Leveque)
   • ... kirtas or floating islands of aquatic vegetation, usually of Papyrus or Phragmites, but also sometimes of Vossia cuspidata, which can break free from vegetation fringing islands in Lake Chad […] 2004, Chet A. Van Duzer, Floating Islands: A Global Bibliography : with an Edition and Translation of G.C. Munz's Exercitatio Academica de Insulis Natantibus (1711):
   • From up there [satellites], the immense masses of vegetation that you see seem like solid ground, but instead they are all kirta, the floating islands. 2004, Caterine Batello, Marzio Marzot, Adamou Touré, Peter Kenmore, The Future is an Ancient Lake:

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