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The Afar Rift, Ethiopia How does the Earth's crust grow at divergent plate boundaries? A unique opportunity in Afar, Ethiopia. In the remote Afar depression in northern Ethiopia, the African Continent is slowly splitting apart and a new ocean is forming. In September 2005, a series of fissures opened along the Afar Depression. Over about a week, the rift pulled apart by eight metres and dropped down by up to one metre. Local people told of a series of earthquakes and how ash darkened the air for three days. At the same time, satellites tracking the region showed that the surface about nearby volcanoes subsided by as much as three metres, as magma was injected along the fissure. This process of ocean formation is normally hidden deep beneath the seas, but in Afar we can walk across the region as the Earth's surface splits apart. The Afar Rift Consortium is a project funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). The consortium is made up of scientists from the Universities of Leeds, Bristol, Oxford, Edinburgh, and Cambridge, and the British Geological Survey, with partners in Ethiopia, France and the US. Its aim is to conduct a major set of experiments in this unique natural laboratory, to further understand the processes involved in shaping the surface of the Earth. Fast and furious: Witnessing the birth of Africa's new ocean. Afar Rift Consortium at the Royal Society's 350th anniversary Summer Science Exhibition. Credit: http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/afar/

Looking NNW from the central part of the Dabbahu rift segment towards the Dabbahu volcano (~30 km away). Photo by Cindy Ebinger, University of Rochester, USA. Map of the Afar region from Google Earth