Lake Duluti is a small, topographically closed crater lake located on the flanks of Mt Meru, northern Tanzania. Analyses of diatoms in three short sediment cores and four modern samples from Lake Duluti were used to infer past environmental changes. 210Pb and 137Cs activity profiles combined with AMS 14C dates provide the chronological framework. Weak agreement between the 210Pb and 14C records, together with dating uncertainty, precludes construction of precise age models. The modern diatom flora, from plankton and three periphytic habitats, is dominated by Aulacoseira ambigua (Grunow) Simonsen, Gomphonema parvulum (Kützing) Grunow and Nitzschia amphibia Grunow. All three cores display similar stratigraphic succession, but the relative ratio of habitats represented by the diatoms varies substantially between cores. Diatoms indicate that the oldest part of the record is characterized by relatively low lake level and swampy vegetation. In the late nineteenth or early twentieth century there was a rapid lake level rise and the swamp turned into an open-water lake. High lake levels have prevailed since that time.