Propagating rifts: the roles of crustal  damage and ascending mantle fluids

Kolawole, Folarin; Ajala, Rasheed

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/se-15-747-2024

Articles | Volume 15, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-15-747-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

(D)rifting into the future: the relevance of rifts and divergent...

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-15-747-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 7

Research article

|

05 Jul 2024

Research article |

| 05 Jul 2024

Propagating rifts: the roles of crustal damage and ascending mantle fluids

Folarin Kolawole and Rasheed Ajala

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-15-747-2024-supplement

Data sets

Propagating rifts: the roles of crustal damage and ascending mantle fluids Rasheed Ajala and Folarin Kolawole https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8302196

Short summary

We investigate the upper-crustal structure of the Rukwa–Tanganyika rift zone in East Africa, where the Tanganyika rift interacts with the Rukwa and Mweru-Wantipa rifts, coinciding with abundant seismicity at the rift tips. Seismic velocity structure and patterns of seismicity clustering reveal zones around 10 km deep with anomalously high V_p / V_s ratios at the rift tips, indicative of a localized mechanically weakened crust caused by mantle volatiles and damage associated with bending strain.