What features are found at rift zones?

What features are found at rift zones?

At the surface they are characterized by numerous vents, fissures, earth cracks, cinder cones, graben, pit craters, and the sources of lava flows. All of these are indications that magma preferentially intrudes into the rift zones and is also often stored there for periods of time up to a few years.

What are rift zones?

Rift zones are areas of weakness in the volcano which form early in its lifetime, likely due to spreading of the volcano as it settles. This linear area that is being rifted, or pulled apart, remains active through most of the volcano’s building stages.

What are the characteristics of a continental rift?

Continental rifts all share the same geometrical features: They have widths that are characteristic of the region in which they form, they are predominantly asymmetric, and they are segmented along axes at a length scale that is also characteristic of the region.

What constitutes a rift zone like the one in Eastern Africa?

A narrow zone, the rift is a developing divergent tectonic plate boundary where the African Plate is in the process of splitting into two tectonic plates, called the Somali Plate and the Nubian Plate, at a rate of 6–7 mm (0.24–0.28 in) per year.

What causes a rift zone?

Believed to be primarily caused by internal and gravitational stresses generated by magma emplacement within and across various regions of the volcano, rift zones allow the intrusion of magmatic dykes into the slopes of the volcano itself.

What is a rift zone and where can we find an example of it at present?

The most extensive of the continental rift valleys are those of the East African Rift System, which extend northward to the Red Sea and eastward into the Indian Ocean. Other notable examples include the Baikal Rift Valley (Russia) and the Rhine Rift Valley (Germany).

What do you know about the Great Rift Valley of Africa?

The Great Rift Valley is a series of contiguous geographic trenches, approximately 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) in total length, that runs from the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon which is in Asia to Mozambique in Southeast Africa.

What is rare and interesting about the Baikal Rift Zone?

Due to Lake Baikal’s isolated location, far from the world’s oceans the microbial and animal life found here has undergone a unique evolution over the last 30 million years. The Baikal Rift Zone, or fracture zone, is also special because it is located 3000km away from the nearest tectonic plate boundary.

Where are rift zones?

Rift zones are areas where the volcano is rifting or splitting apart. The rock in a rift zone has many cracks and is relatively weak, and thus it is easiest for magma to make its way to the surface through these rift zones. Once at the surface, the lava flows downhill, following local topography.

The topography of the Basin and Range Province and Rio Grande Rift reveals the full range of characteristics of a continental rift zone. First, much of the region—particularly the northern portion—is well above sea level. There the whole landscape is moving upward, with the ranges rising a little faster than the adjacent basins.

Which is part of a volcano has a rift zone?

Part of a volcano where a set of linear cracks form. East Rift Zone on Kīlauea, Hawaiʻi. A rift zone is a feature of some volcanoes, especially shield volcanoes, in which a set of linear cracks (or rifts) develops in a volcanic edifice, typically forming into two or three well-defined regions along the flanks of the vent.

How is the shape of a rift zone determined?

Rift zone. It is the grouping of these fissures, and the dykes that feed them, that serves to delineate where and whether a rift zone is to be defined. The accumulated lava of repeated eruptions from rift zones along with the endogenous growth created by magma intrusions causes these volcanoes to have an elongated shape.

What happens when rifts remain above sea level?

Where rifts remain above sea level they form a rift valley, which may be filled by water forming a rift lake. The axis of the rift area may contain volcanic rocks, and active volcanism is a part of many, but not all, active rift systems.