TheGreat Rift Valley (Swahili:Bonde la ufa) is a series of contiguous geographicdepressions, approximately 6,000 or 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) in total length, the definition varying between sources, that runs from the southern TurkishHatay Province in Asia, through theRed Sea, toMozambique inSoutheast Africa.[1][2] While the name remains in some usages, it is rarely used ingeology as it is considered an imprecise merging ofrift andfault systems.
This valley extends southward fromWestern Asia into the eastern part of Africa, where several deep, elongated lakes, calledribbon lakes, exist on the rift valley floor,Lake Malawi andLake Tanganyika being two such examples. The region has a unique ecosystem and contains a number of Africa's wildlife parks.
The Great Rift Valley, Location: Uganda.Map of the Great Rift Valley. English version. The background map and the locator map are raster images embedded into the SVG file.
East African Rift ValleyEast Africa with activevolcanoes (red triangles) and theAfar Triangle (shaded, center)—atriple junction where three plates are pulling away from one another.This Envisat radar image captures volcanoes dotted across the landscape in Tanzania, including the distinctive Ol Doinyo Lengai (at lower left), in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa. The Gelai Volcano (2942 m) is visible at the top, and the Kitumbeine volcano
The East African Rift follows the Red Sea to the end before turning inland into theEthiopian highlands, dividing the country into two large and adjacent but separate mountainous regions. In Kenya, Uganda, and the fringes of South Sudan, the Great Rift runs along two separate branches that are joined to each other only at their southern end, in SouthernTanzania along its border withZambia. The two branches are called theWestern Rift Valley and theEastern Rift Valley.
InKenya, the valley is deepest to the north ofNairobi. As the lakes in the Eastern Rift have no output to the sea and tend to be shallow, they have a highmineral content as the evaporation of water leaves the salts behind. For example,Lake Magadi has high concentrations of soda (sodium carbonate) andLake Elmenteita,Lake Bogoria, andLake Nakuru are all stronglyalkaline, while the freshwater springs supplyingLake Naivasha are essential to support its current biological variety.
The southern section of the Rift Valley includesLake Malawi, the third-deepest freshwater body in the world, which reaches 706 metres (2,316 ft) in depth and separates theNyassa plateau of Northern Mozambique from Malawi. The rift extends southwards from Lake Malawi as the valley of theShire River, which flows from the lake into theZambezi River. The rift continues south of the Zambezi as theUrema Valley of central Mozambique.[5]
^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.
Photographic atlas of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge Rift Valley, 1977,ISBN978-0-387-90247-0
Rift Valley fever : an emerging human and animal problem, 1982,ISBN978-92-4-170063-4
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]
