Events & Courses

The Western Regional Group is pleased to invite you to an evening presentation on rifting in Africa.  

The rifting of continents and eventual formation of ocean basins is a fundamental component of plate tectonics, yet the mechanism for break-up is poorly understood. Rifting of the continents leading to plate rupture occurs by a combination of mechanical deformation and magma intrusion, but the available driving forces have been estimated to be as much as an order of magnitude smaller than those required to rupture thick continental lithosphere. The East Africa Rift system (EARS) is an ideal place to study this; it captures the initiation of a rift in the south through to incipient oceanic spreading in north-eastern Ethiopia - Afar.

In this talk, Mike will describe how seismological investigations can be used to test models of rifting and how the resulting data have provided unprecedented images of the deep Earth beneath a rifting environment. Mike reviews his latest seismic images of the velocity and discontinuity structure in the region. 

Time

The talk will start at 6.30pm

Speaker

Professor Mike Kendall, University of Bristol