African Food and Art

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The Sahara Desert is Alive with Volcanoes

Mount Koussi, also called Emi Koussi, located in northern Chad is the highest peak of Africa’s largest driest desert, the Sahara. 


Emi Koussi volcano at 2.1 miles above sea level is the highest peak of Africa’s largest driest desert, the Sahara.
African Desert volcano Emi Koussi 

The Sahara desert is not just miles and miles of sand 


In the Sahara desert, there are lots of sand dunes, with some of them as high as 500 feet high, that’s a little more than one and a half football fields and is taller than the Statue of Liberty. The Sahara is the largest desert on the African continent and is Earth's largest hot desert. 

There are also volcanoes in the world’s largest hot desert, Emi Koussi. The Emi Koussi volcano at 2.1 miles above sea level is the highest peak of Africa’s largest driest desert, the Sahara. 
 
African Desert volcano, Emi Koussi is located in northern Chad, at the southeastern end of the Tibesti Mountain Range in the Sahara desert. Chad is largest of Africa's 16 landlocked countries with 1.284 million sq km or about 4.9 million sq miles of total land area. 

 The Tibesti are a mountain range in the central Sahara desert, mainly located in northern Chad and a small portion in southern Libya. 


Africa's Emi Koussi volcano formation
The Tibesti are a mountain range in the central Sahara desert, mainly located in northern Chad and a small portion in southern Libya.
Tibesti Mountains

Emi Koussi volcano was formed from lava flows that were not very thick; the lava flowed more like thin gravy than very thick gravy. Emi Koussi is a typical class of volcano composed of layers of hardened lava, tephra or fragmental material, and volcanic ash.
According to NASA, the summit of Emi Koussi includes three calderas formed by powerful eruptions. A caldera is a large, usually circular depression at the summit of a volcano formed when magma is withdrawn or erupted from a shallow underground magma reservoir. 

Two older and overlapping calderas form a large depression surrounded by a distinctive rim. The youngest and smallest caldera, Era Kohor, formed because of eruptive activity within the past 2 million years. 

Young volcanic features of the Emi Koussi, including lava flows and scoria cones are also thought to be less than 2 million years old. There are no historical records of eruptions at Emi Koussi, but there is an active thermal area on the southern side of the volcano.

Climbing and exploring Emi Koussi

The Tibesti Mountains are one of the most significant and perhaps least studied intra continental volcanic regions of the world. Political instability and the harsh Saharan climate have limited field access to the area. 

 The best time to climb the Emi Koussi is November to March.  It does not present any particular difficulty as the climbing, the main obstacles being access, logistics and insecurity. Emi Koussi was first ascended in 1938 by Wilfred Thesiger.

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