GD
Geodynamics

East Africa

Building the Earth in a sandbox

and January 7, 2026
Fentale Volcano

  Building the Earth in a sandbox   The Main Ethiopian Rift stretches for hundreds of kilometers through Ethiopia, a massive fracture where Africa is slowly tearing apart to birth a new ocean. However, the processes driving this continental breakup remain hidden deep beneath layers of volcanic rock and millions of years of geological history. …[Read More]

What controls Victoria microplate rotation in the East African Rift?

July 15, 2020
Lake Magadi, Kenya.

This week in News & Views, Anne Glerum, postdoc at GFZ Potsdam, discusses how her numerical models support a lithosphere-driven mechanism for the rotation of large continental microplates, like Victoria in the East African Rift System. The East African Rift System (EARS) is a newly forming divergent boundary between the Nubian and Somalian plates (Fig. …[Read More]