61 Direction of Sustainable Development of the South Province Territories I Strolling along the waterways 60 Strolling along the waterways The Jade Lake A magnificent jade colour A very varied route provides access to this sinkhole which is adorned with water the colour of jade stone, as soon as the sunlight shines through. As youwalk along the horizon, the plateau and the Isle of Pines with the N’Ga Peak clearly emerge, offering a unique panorama over the bay. What future imprint of man? Various paths allow you to wander, sometimes marked by cairns and drawn by the footsteps of men over the past centuries, sometimes created by another hand of man, that of the mine, just a stone’s throw away. Lake Xere Wapo A lake on borrowed time It would constitute the oldest record in the history of the Western Pacific (Stevenson and Al., 2005). The analysis of sediment cores made it possible to trace the history of climate and plant formations over more than 90,000 years, a period during which, well before the arrival of man, natural fires punctuated the alternation between forests and shrub in Gymnostoma. In this lake, a micro-endemic species of sphagnum was discovered in 2019. But will the lake, its history and its sphagnum moss survive the drying up predicted by the progress of neighbouring mining? The Mine, very close
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