What is an example of rifting?
What is an example of rifting?
The most extensive of the continental rift valleys are those of the East African Rift System, which extend northward to the Red Sea and eastward into the Indian Ocean. Other notable examples include the Baikal Rift Valley (Russia) and the Rhine Rift Valley (Germany).
What is an active continental rift zone?
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.
What causes rifting?
Rifting can be caused when hot material from a mantle plume reaches the base of a continental plate and causes the overlying lithosphere to heat up. In addition to this the uwards movement of the plume against the base of the plate results in extensional forces, which can cause rifting.
What happens after rifting?
When the lithosphere separates a rift-drift transition takes place, where the stretching ceases and the sea floor spreading begins to take place, as magma moves up through the ridge. If sea floor spreading continues, the result will be the formation of a new ocean basin.
Where on earth is the best example of current active rifting?
We begin with perhaps the best example of a modern continental rift zone – the East African Rift. The East African Rift is a high terrain, a broad upwarp of the continent. It is a region of high heat flow and volcanoes, of normal faults that bound uplifted blocks of crust and down dropped basins.
Where do we see active rift on land?
Very few active rift valleys are found on continental lithosphere. The East African Rift, the Baikal Rift Valley, the West Antarctic Rift, and the Rio Grande Rift are Earth’s major active continental rift valleys….Vocabulary.
| Term | Part of Speech | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| dormant | adjective | state of minimal growth or activity. |
Why is rifting important?
Rifting may lead to continental breakup and formation of oceanic basins. Successful rifting leads to seafloor spreading along a mid-oceanic ridge and a set of conjugate margins separated by an oceanic basin.
How does rifting cause uplift?
Areas adjacent to rifts, or rift shoulders, are often observed to be uplifted as much as a kilometer or more. The mantle flow results in thinning of the adjacent lithosphere causing flanking uplift as well as slowing of the subsidence of the middle of the rift.
Where is rifting happening today?
The East African Rift system is an example of where this is currently happening. The East African Rift Valley stretches over 3,000km from the Gulf of Aden in the north towards Zimbabwe in the south, splitting the African plate into two unequal parts: the Somali and Nubian plates.
Is the Rio Grande Rift still active?
The Rio Grande Rift, a thinning and stretching of Earth’s surface that extends from Colorado’s central Rocky Mountains to Mexico, is not dead but geologically alive and active, according to a new study involving scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental …
