Kalissaye Avifaunal Reserve (KAR) is a small nature reserve in Senegal, located at the mouth of Kalissaye Pond in the middle of the

Casamance River The Casamance River ( French: ''Fleuve Casamance'') in Senegal flows westward for the most part into the Atlantic Ocean along a path about in length. However, only are navigable. The Casamance is the principal river of the Kolda, Sédhiou, a ...

. Like Basse Casamance National Park 35 km away, KAR is currently closed due to the

Casamance Conflict The Casamance conflict is an ongoing low-level conflict that has been waged between the Politics of Senegal, Government of Senegal and the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) since 1982. On May 1, 2014, the leader of the MFDC Suing f ...

Flora

On the small sandy islands making up the reserve, vegetation consists mainly of ''

Ipomoea pes-caprae ''Ipomoea pes-caprae'', also known as bayhops, bay-hops, beach morning glory, railroad vine, or goat's foot, is a common pantropical creeping vine belonging to the family Convolvulaceae. It grows on the upper parts of beaches and endures salted a ...

'', ''

Sporobolus spicatus ''Sporobolus spicatus'', also known as salt grass, is a halophyte. Distribution This bunchgrass is distributed: *in dryer parts of Africa such as Namibia, as a well known common plant in the western desert of Egypt *from the Mediterranean coas ...

'', and ''

Alternanthera maritima ''Alternanthera'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family Amaranthaceae. It is a widespread genus with most species occurring in the tropical Americas,Sánchez-Del Pino, I., et al. (2012)Molecular phylogenetics of ''Alternanthera'' (Gomphren ...

''.

Fauna

The reserve was created in 1978 to protect

sea turtle Sea turtles (superfamily Chelonioidea), sometimes called marine turtles, are reptiles of the order Testudines and of the suborder Cryptodira. The seven existing species of sea turtles are the flatback, green, hawksbill, leatherback, loggerh ...

and

seabird colonies Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same envi ...

. There were more than 10,000

Caspian tern The Caspian tern (''Hydroprogne caspia'') is a species of tern, with a subcosmopolitan but scattered distribution. Despite its extensive range, it is monotypic of its genus, and has no accepted subspecies. The genus name is from Ancient Greek '' ...

s (''Sterna caspia'') in the reserve during the 1980s, and there are also many

royal tern The royal tern (''Thalasseus maximus'') is a tern in the family Laridae. The species is endemic to the Americas, though vagrants have been identified in Europe.Buckley, P. A. and F. G. Buckley (2020). Royal Tern (Thalasseus maximus), version 1. ...

s (''Thalasseus maximus'') and

great white pelican The great white pelican (''Pelecanus onocrotalus'') also known as the eastern white pelican, rosy pelican or simply white pelican is a bird in the pelican family. It breeds from southeastern Europe through Asia and Africa, in swamps and shallow ...

s (''Pelecanus onocrotalus''). Several sea turtle species are quite populous, including loggerheads (''Caretta caretta'') and

green turtle The green sea turtle (''Chelonia mydas''), also known as the green turtle, black (sea) turtle or Pacific green turtle, is a species of large sea turtle of the family Cheloniidae. It is the only species in the genus ''Chelonia''. Its range exte ...

s (''Chelonia mydas''). The

common dolphin The common dolphin (''Delphinus delphis'') is the most abundant cetacean in the world, with a global population of about six million. Despite this fact and its vernacular name, the common dolphin is not thought of as the archetypal dolphin, wit ...

(''Delphinus delphis'') and the

African manatee The African manatee (''Trichechus senegalensis''), also known as the West African manatee, is a species of manatee that inhabits much of Western Africa – from Senegal to Angola. It is the only manatee species to be found in the Old World. Ta ...

(''Trichechus senegalensis'') are also observed in the area.

Climate change

In 2022, the

IPCC Sixth Assessment Report The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the sixth in a series of reports which assess the available scientific information on climate change. Three Working Groups (WGI, II, ...

included Kalissaye Avifaunal Reserve in the list of African natural heritage sites which would be threatened by

flooding A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant concern in agriculture, civi ...

and

coastal erosion Coastal erosion is the loss or displacement of land, or the long-term removal of sediment and rocks along the coastline due to the action of Wind wave, waves, Ocean current, currents, tides, wind-driven water, waterborne ice, or other impacts ...

by the end of the century, but only if

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

followed RCP 8.5, which is the scenario of high and continually increasing

greenhouse gas Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the gases in the atmosphere that raise the surface temperature of planets such as the Earth. Unlike other gases, greenhouse gases absorb the radiations that a planet emits, resulting in the greenhouse effect. T ...

emissions associated with the warming of over 4°C., and is no longer considered very likely. The other, more plausible scenarios result in lower warming levels and consequently lower sea level rise: yet, sea levels would continue to increase for about 10,000 years under all of them. Even if the warming is limited to 1.5°C, global sea level rise is still expected to exceed after 2000 years (and higher warming levels will see larger increases by then), consequently exceeding 2100 levels of sea level rise under RCP 8.5 (~ with a range of ) well before the year 4000.IPCC, 2021
Summary for Policymakers
In
Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
[Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 3−32, doi:10.1017/9781009157896.001.

References

External links

Kalissaye Avifaunal Reserve

World Database on Protected Areas

Official website

Wetlands International
{{National Parks of Senegal Nature reserves in Senegal Ramsar sites in Senegal

Flora

Fauna

Climate change

See also

References

External links