Abstract
The Ethiopian Rift Valley is best known for its beautiful lakes with their abundant bird and other wildlife and, in recent years, pleasant lakeside lodges ranging from the comfortable to the luxurious and offering a range of recreational activities. Few visitors, however, are aware that they are standing upon a unique feature of the earth’s surface and that beneath their feet a continent is in the early stages of breaking apart. To the geologist the Rift Valley , with its many manifestations of this process, provides an irresistible outdoor laboratory for furthering understanding of how our earth works.
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Notes
- 1.
The term “Main Ethiopian Rift” refers to that section of the Rift System between just north of Awash, and Lake Chamo. The terms “Ethiopian Rift Valley”, “Ethiopian Rift”, “Rift Valley” and simply “Rift” are also used, but sometimes these implicitly include Afar. This is one of many instances where terminology is used loosely and can lead to confusion. In this book, use of any of the above terms applies to the Main Ethiopian Rift only. Afar will always be referred to by name.
- 2.
In the local Dorze language Tosa means “God” and Sucha means “stone”.
- 3.
It is not certain whether the basalt flow caused the separation of the lakes, or whether they were already separated when the basalt erupted.
- 4.
Since “graben” is a German word, its plural form “graben”, is frequently, and more correctly used rather than “grabens”. However, although “horst” is also a German word (meaning “heap”), the plural “horsts” is generally used. Not logical, but there it is!
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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Williams, F.M. (2016). The Rift Valley Southwards: Volcanoes, and Lakes Ancient and Modern. In: Understanding Ethiopia. GeoGuide. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02180-5_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02180-5_17
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