Abstract

This contribution was double-blind reviewed as full paper. Water hyacinth, or Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms, is an invasive and free floating water plant, native to South America that has often been marked as one of the world’s worst invasive aquatic species. It grows into large dense vegetable carpets that block sun energy transmission into shallow waters or even the lake bottom. This study focuses on two differ-ent water bodies in the tropical/subtropical zone, where water hyacinth infestation is al-ready an issue. A parallel research approach was chosen in order to compare regional results with regards to operability and suitability of the chosen method. The first area studied is the south-eastern area of the Inle Lake in Central Myanmar, and the second region is the Winam Gulf on Lake Victoria in Kenya. The Winam Gulf has been clogged by Eichhornia crassipes for decades, in contrast to a few reports about Water hyacinth infestation on the Inle lake wa-ters. As in many other countries in the tropics, the current local monitoring and control measures of invasive aquatic vegetation in Myanmar and Kenya mostly rely on simple