Contemporary, Holocene, and Quaternary deformation of the Asal Rift, Djibouti: implications for the mechanics of slow spreading ridges

Abstract

The Asal rift in the Afar Depression of Djibouti, Africa, provides the world's best subaerial analogue for young slow spreading mid-ocean ridges. Seismic, geodetic, and field observations of a seismovolcanic event in 1978 at Asal yield estimates of the fault and dike locations, geometry, displacement, and volume of basalt extruded in a rifting event. A 6-9 kyr-old lake shore highstand at Asal has been warped downward by 70 m, providing a Holocene measure of the vertical deformation across the rift. -from Authors