What are characteristics of East African Rift Valley?
The most well-known rift valley on Earth is probably the so-called “Great Rift Valley System” which stretches from the Middle East in the north to Mozambique in the south. The area is geologically active, and features volcanoes, hot springs, geysers, and frequent earthquakes.
What are some unusual characteristics of the lakes in the Great Rift Valley?
What are some unusual characteristics of the lakes in the Great Rift Valley? Heat from the Earth’s interior makes some lakes so hot that no human can swim in them. Some lakes are extremely salty. What is the climate of the highlands in East Africa like?
How were the African rift lakes formed?
The East African rifts attained their present form mainly as a result of earth movements during the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2,600,000 to 11,700 years ago), and the lakes must have been formed after the landscapes in which they are set.
What is the typical shape of Rift Valley lakes in Africa?
The East African Rift System stretches from the Red Sea to Mozambique. A rift valley is a linear shaped lowland between several highlands or mountain ranges created by the action of a geologic rift or fault. The system is some 4,000 miles (6,400 km) long and averages 30–40 miles (48–64 km) wide.
Why is the Rift Valley important?
The system of rift valleys that characterizes the African continent represents a perfect environment to understand the evolution of mankind; for the important paleoanthropological discoveries in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire, the African rift valleys are indeed considered the “cradle of mankind”, that is …
How the Great Rift Valley was formed in East Africa?
Geologists know that the Rift Valley was formed by violent subterranean forces that tore apart the earth’s crust. These forces caused huge chunks of the crust to sink between parallel fault lines and force up molten rock in volcanic eruptions.
What are three facts about the Great Rift Valley?
It contains the Rift Valley lakes, which include some of the deepest lakes in the world (up to 1,470 metres deep at Lake Tanganyika)….These are the largest, in order of size from largest to smallest:
- Lake Victoria.
- Lake Tanganyika.
- Lake Malawi (Lake Nyasa)
- Lake Turkana (Lake Rudolf)
- Lake Albert.
Why are lakes in Rift Valley salty?
The rains chemically interact with rift terrains, which are dominated with natrocarbonatitic volcanic materials, thus transporting dissolved salts to the lakes. In addition, hot springs around the shores of these lakes carry significant salinity loads into the lakes.
Why Rift Valley is formed in East Africa?
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.
What is the meaning of Rift Valley lake?
The Rift Valley lakes are a series of lakes in the East African Rift valley that runs through eastern Africa from Ethiopia in the north to Malawi in the south, and includes the African Great Lakes in the south.
Why is the East African Rift Valley important?
The Rift Valley in East Africa has been a rich source of hominid fossils that allow the study of human evolution. The rapidly eroding highlands quickly filled the valley with sediments, creating a favorable environment for the preservation of remains.
Is the Great Rift Valley of East Africa a divergent plate boundary?
The East African Rift Valley (EAR) is a developing divergent plate boundary in East Africa. These plates intersect in the Afar region of Ethiopia at what is known as a ‘triple junction’.
Are all lakes located around the East African Rift considered Rift lakes?
Not all lakes located around the East African Rift are rift lakes. Lake Victoria, the largest freshwater lake in Africa, is not a rift lake, for instance. Lake Victoria’s basin formed as mountains uplifted around it. It did not sink as a result of the nearby East African Rift.
Is there still a rift valley in Africa?
In fact, to this date, there is still fault action in Africa, and the rift valley, that may eventually lead to the formation of other basins within the rift. Most of the lakes within the valley, especially those in the Eastern Rift, do not possess outlets for drainage into the sea.
What are the characteristics of Western Rift Valley?
The Western Rift is one of the most biodiverse regions in Africa, featuring a narrow corridor of highland forest s, snow-capped mountains, savanna s, and chains of lake s and wetland s. Rift lake s, formed as freshwater floods rift valleys, often mark rift valley systems.
What are the northernmost lakes in the Rift Valley?
The northernmost section of the Rift Valley features lakes from Ethiopia such as Lake Shala, Lake Abaya, and Lake Chamo among others. In Kenya, they include the likes of Lake Baringo, Lake Magadi, and others.