Great Rift Valley
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The Great Rift Valley (Swahili: Bonde la ufa) is a series of contiguous geographic trenches, approximately 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) in total length, that runs from Lebanon in Asia to Mozambique in Southeast Africa.[1] While the name continues in some usages, it is rarely used in geology as it is considered an imprecise merging of separate though related rift and fault systems.
This valley extends northward for 5,950 km through the eastern part of Africa, through the
The term Great Rift Valley is most often used to refer to the valley of the
Theoretical extent
Today these rifts and faults are seen as distinct, although connected, but originally, the Great Rift Valley was thought to be a single feature that extended from
Asia
The northernmost part of the Rift corresponds to the central section of what is called today the
The
Off the southern tip of Sinai in the Red Sea, the
Africa
The East African Rift follows the Red Sea to the end before turning inland into the
The Western Rift, also called the
Much of this area lies within the boundaries of national parks such as
In
The southern section of the Rift Valley includes Lake Malawi, the third-deepest freshwater body in the world, which reaches 706 metres (2,316 ft) in depth and separates the Nyassa plateau of Northern Mozambique from Malawi. The rift extends southwards from Lake Malawi as the valley of the Shire River, which flows from the lake into the Zambezi River. The rift continues south of the Zambezi as the Urema Valley of central Mozambique. Some people would wonder how long will the rift remain stable.[4]
See also
- Great Rift Valley, Ethiopia
- Great Rift Valley, Kenya
- Rift Valley fever
- Rift Valley lakes
- Rift Valley Province
- Rift Valley Railways
- Rift Valley Technical Training Institute
- The Great Rift: Africa's Wild Heart, a BBC/Animal Planet production
- Major earthquakes
References
- ISBN 978-0-87779-546-9.
- ISBN 978-1-84162-284-2.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-86239-196-3.
- ^ Steinbruch, Franziska (2010). Geology and geomorphology of the Urema Graben with emphasis on the evolution of Lake Urema, Journal of African Earth Sciences, Volume 58, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 272-284. ISSN 1464-343X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jafrearsci.2010.03.007.
Further reading
- Africa's Great Rift Valley, 2001, ISBN 978-0-8109-0602-0
- Tribes of the Great Rift Valley, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8109-9411-9
- East African Rift Valley lakes, 2006, OCLC 76876862
- Photographic atlas of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge Rift Valley, 1977, ISBN 978-0-387-90247-0
- Rift Valley fever : an emerging human and animal problem, 1982, ISBN 978-92-4-170063-4
- Rift valley: definition and geologic significance, Giacomo Corti (National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources) – The Ethiopian Rift Valley, 2013, [1]
- Big crack is evidence that East Africa could be splitting in two, by Lucia Perez Diaz, CNN. Updated April 5, 2018
External links
- Article on geology.com
- Geological Structure
- New International Encyclopedia. 1905. .