Villages along the road in the vicinity of the lake include Cha, Nyos, Munji, Djingbe, and Subum. Most geologists suspect a landslide, but some believe that a small volcanic eruption may have occurred on the bed of the lake. It was a quiet, blue coloured, beautiful lake, surrounded by small villages where the livelihood of the villagers was based on farming and raising cattle. It is not known what triggered the catastrophic outgassing. Der Nyos-See ist ein Kratersee in Kamerun (Zentralafrika). Lake Nyos is located south of the dirt road from Wum, about 30 km (19 mi) to the west, to Nkambé in the east. Lake Nyos is inside the crater of one of the maars that formed about 400 years ago. Lake Nyos sits high in a volcanic plain amidst the Cameroon line of volcanoes, which stretches into the Gulf of Guinea. On the night of the 26th of August, 1986, however, everything changed.
The lake is … Lake Nyos was formed in a volcanic crater created as recently as 400 years ago. Beneath the lake is a pocket of magma which causes the carbon dioxide to mix with water and change it to carbonic acid. Lake Nyos is a volcanic lake in the northwestern region of Cameroon, situated some 196 miles northwest of the capital Yaoundé.
Others still believe there was a small earthquake, but because witnesses did not report feeling any tremors on the morning of the disaster, this hypothesis is unlikely. The hole from the eruption eventually fills with water, forming a crater lake. A third possibility is that cool rainwater falling on one side of the lake triggered the overturn. The event resulted in the supersaturated deep water rapidly mixing with the uppe…
The maar formed during an explosive eruption of carbon dioxide gas. Scientists reasoned that CO 2 had been trapped in the bottom of Lake Nyos for a long time, held down by 682 feet (208 meters) of water. CO 2 was bubbling into the lake from below. Water filled the craters, and they became lakes. The lake itself fills a circular maar, formed when groundwater meets hot lava or magma and explodes. Der See wurde durch die Nyos-Tragödie bekannt, bei der im August 1986 plötzlich große Mengen von Kohlenstoffdioxid (CO2) aus dem See austraten und etwa 1700 Bewohner der umliegenden Dörfer töteten. Er befindet sich in einem alten Vulkankrater im Oku-Vulkangebiet. The lake is 50 km (31 mi) from the Nigerian border to the north, and lies on the northern slopes of the Massif du Mbam, drained by streams running north, then northwest, to the Katsina-Ala River in Nigeria which is part of the Benue River basin. Geologists believe the Nyos maar formed …
The chain acts as a natural boundary between Nigeria and Cameroon.
The lake is situated on the flank of an inactive Oku volcanic plain.