What is the continental plate doing at the East African Rift system?
The East African Rift Valley (EAR) is a developing divergent plate boundary in East Africa. Here the eastern portion of Africa, the Somalian plate, is pulling away from the rest of the continent, that comprises the Nubian plate.
Is the East African Rift Valley is an example of continental rifting?
The most prominent example of a continental rift is the East-African Rift Valley and its continuations into the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In the Red Sea, where sea water already has flooded the rift, this can already be observed – the youth stadium of a new ocean.
How did the East African Rift form?
Twenty-five million years ago, as plate tectonics began to pull apart eastern Africa, the landscape that would eventually be home to the first humans began to take shape. The East African Rift Valley, as the region is known, formed where the Somalian and Nubian plates are pulling away from the Arabian Plate.
Is the East African Rift Valley a basin?
Publisher Summary. This chapter describes the different aspects of the East African rift basins. The East African rift consists of a single valley in its northern most section. The existence of topographic barriers at transfer zones segments the Rift into a series of hydrologically isolated basins.
When a continental and continental plates collide what geological feature forms?
Collision Zones and Mountains Instead, a collision between two continental plates crunches and folds the rock at the boundary, lifting it up and leading to the formation of mountains and mountain ranges.
How does the East African Rift relate to plate tectonics quizlet?
How does the East African Rift relate to plate tectonics? The rift lies on a continental rift where two plates are diverging.
What is a continental rift basin?
A Continental rift is the belt or zone of the continental lithosphere where the extensional deformation (rifting) is occurring. These zones have important consequences and geological features, and if the rifting is successful, lead to the formation of new ocean basins.
How do rift basins form?
Major rifts occur along the central axis of most mid-ocean ridges, where new oceanic crust and lithosphere is created along a divergent boundary between two tectonic plates. Failed rifts are the result of continental rifting that failed to continue to the point of break-up.
What is the East African Rift valley known for?
The most famous rift lakes in the world may be the series of narrow, deep rift valleys in the East African Rift known simply as the Rift Valley lakes. The Rift Valley lakes, stretching from Ethiopia to Malawi, are sites of amazing biodiversity….Vocabulary.
| Term | Part of Speech | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| graben | noun | small rift valley. |
How are rift valleys formed Upsc?
Rift Valleys A rift valley is a lowland region that forms where Earth’s tectonic plates move apart, or rift. Rift valleys are found both on land and at the bottom of the ocean and are created by the process of seafloor spreading.
What basin is in East Africa?
The greater Turkana Basin in East Africa (mainly northwestern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, smaller parts of eastern Uganda and southeastern South Sudan) determines a large endorheic basin, a drainage basin with no outflow centered around the north-southwards directed Gregory Rift system in Kenya and southern Ethiopia.
What geological feature resulted from the collision of two continental plates?
subduction
If two tectonic plates collide, they form a convergent plate boundary. Usually, one of the converging plates will move beneath the other, a process known as subduction. Deep trenches are features often formed where tectonic plates are being subducted and earthquakes are common.
Where are the rift valleys in East Africa?
Rifting has progressed to seafloor spreading in parts of the Red Sea rift, and along the length of the Gulf of Aden rift, with incipient seafloor spreading in the northern and eastern Afar depression. The Ethiopian, Eastern and Western rift valleys are superposed on the broad, ˜2500 m high Ethiopia–Yemen and ˜1000 m high East African plateaux.
How are continental rifts related to plate boundaries?
On Earth, continental rifts can develop into new plate boundaries where oceanic lithosphere starts to form. This paper examines a seismically and volcanically active rift system, the East African Rift, in which all stages of this complex evolution can be identified and modelled.
Is the East African Rift a geodynamic setting?
Thus, the East African Rift is a laboratory that encompasses the birth to break–up history of a rift within one geodynamic setting.
How are continental rifts related to the Solar System?
Cynthia Ebinger discusses the evolution of continental rifts through the example of the East African Rift system, in the Bullerwell Lecture, given at the European Union of Geosciences meeting in Nice, April 2004. Rifts feature highly in the geological history of the Earth, aswell as on the surfaces of other solar system bodies such as Mars.