Name: East African Rift Valley
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| location |
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| Beautiful scenery |
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| top view! |
HISTORY: The East African Rift Valley falls in Africa and it was formed through the diverging motion of the African plate and the Arabian plate. As these two plates diverge, the land in the middle falls, forming a rift valley.
CURRENTLY: The East African Rift System (EARS) is the one the geologic wonders of the worls, a place where the earth's tectonic forces are presently trying to create new plates by splitting apart old ones. In simple terms, a rift can be thought of as a fracture in the earth's surface that widens over time, or more technically, an an elongate basin bounded by opposed steeply dipping normal faults. Geologists are still debating exactly how rifting comes about, but the process is so well displayed in East Africa that geologists have attached a name to the new plate-to-be; the Nubian Plate makes up most of Africa, while the smaller plate that is pulling away has been named the Somalian Plate. These two plates are moving away from each other and also away from the Arabian plate from the north. The point where these three plates meet in the Afar region of Ethopia forms what is called a triple-junction. However, all the rifting in East Africa is not confined to the Horn of Africa; there is a lot of rifting activity further south as well, extending Kenya and Tanzania and Great Lakes region of Africa.
EXTRA INFO: East Africa Rift System is one of the most extensive rifts on the earth's surface, extending in Jordan in southwestern Asia southward through eastern Africa to Mozambique. The system is some 4000 miles (6,400 km) long and averages 30-40 miles (48-64 km) wide. The plateaus adjacent to the rift generally slope upward toward the valley and provide an average drop of from 2,000-3,000 feet (600-900 m) to the valley floor. In some places, such as Gikuyu and Mau escarpments, the drop averages more than 9,000 feet (2,700 m). The rift ha been forming for some 30,000,000 years (as Africa and Arabian Peninsula separated) and has been accompanied by extensive volcanism along parts of its length, producing such massifs as Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya.
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| Kivu, Lake |
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| Tanzania, Kilimanjaro Crater Crater Rim of Kilimanjaro at dawn |
Credits:
-www.google.com
-http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/176462/East-African-Rift-System
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