Goats vs. Grasshoppers The two main herbivores present around the Turkana Basin Institute are goats and grasshoppers. The goats are obvious as you travel around – there are small groups of them moving about or resting in the shade of trees during the day. Grasshoppers are also common out here, though [...]
The TBI Field School Students visited the Kerio Delta this weekend. We visited the Kerio Delta as part of the Ecology module, looking at some of the different vegetation types and learning about some of the species that live in the deltas of Lake Turkana. One of the most important and beautiful groups of insects [...]
The Spring Field School has taken off at the Turkana Basin Institute at South Turkwel. Students have started exploring the ecology of the area. Understanding ecology involves an appreciation of the vegetation. Students have been conducting vegetation surveys to learn about the density, patterns and relationships between plants at TBI. We have been spending time [...]
The students have been studying Vertebrate Paleontology with Profs Rene Bobbe and Kyalo Manthi for the current module As part of this they recently made a timeline of the Earth's History using toilet paper. Here are some of the highlights from this fun exercise... [...]
Hello - we have had a couple of interesting visitors at TBI last night and this morning. Just as I was heading to bed, the students came to get me saying there was a snake in the mess hall. I went over and found this beautiful snake clinging to one of the table legs. This [...]
Yesterday Kenya and the world celebrated the life of Prof. Wangari Maathai, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist who recently passed away.
After the visit to the Kerio Delta, closer to ‘home’ at TBI, we investigated the riverine ecology. This involved jumping into the river and getting wet. It wasn’t hard to convince everyone to do so in the middle of a hot sunny morning!
The Lake Turkana Basin, while being a hot and dry area, includes several river systems and the 6,000 km2 + lake Turkana. Three rivers feed into the lake: The Turwel, Kerio and Omo. The Omo, from the highlands of Ethiopia contributes about 90 % of the lakes’ waters. The Kerio River comes from the south, [...]