Great Rift Valley :Dam Burst
Many people died when a dam burst its banks near a town in Kenya’s Rift Valley, as heavy rains and floods battered the country.
- Great Rift Valley is one of the most extensive rifts on Earth’s surface that runs along part of East Africa.
- It is part of a larger feature called the East African Rift System (EARS).
- It runs from Jordan in southwestern Asia to the coast of the Indian Ocean in central Mozambique.
- It runs across many countries: Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique.
- The valley is situated in a region where three tectonic plates meet.
- It was formed about 40 million years ago when tectonic plates split and gave rise to the East African Rift.
- The area is geologically active and features volcanoes, hot springs, geysers and frequent earthquakes.
- A series of some thirty lakeslies along its length; the three largest in Africa are known as the Great Lakes and include Lake Tanganyika, the second deepest lake in the world, and Lake Victoria, the second-largest freshwater lake by surface area in the world.
- Many of Africa’s highest mountains—including Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, and Mount Margherita—are in ranges fronting the Rift Valley.
- Rift Valley is a lowland region that forms where Earth’s tectonic plates move apart, or rift.
- They are found on land and at the bottom of the ocean, where they are created by the process of seafloor spreading.
- They differ from river valleysand glacial valleys in that they are created by tectonic activity and not the process of erosion.
