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The Great Rift Valley Swahili : Bonde la ufa is a series of contiguous geographic depressions , approximately 6, or 7, kilometres 4, mi in total length, the definition varying between sources, that runs from the southern Turkish Hatay Province in Asia, through the Red Sea , to Mozambique in Southeast Africa. This valley extends southward from Western Asia into the eastern part of Africa, where several deep, elongated lakes, called ribbon lakes , exist on the rift valley floor, Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika being two such examples.
The region has a unique ecosystem and contains a number of Africa's wildlife parks. The term Great Rift Valley is most often used to refer to the valley of the East African Rift , the divergent plate boundary which extends from the Afar Triple Junction southward through eastern Africa , and is in the process of splitting the African Plate into two new and separate plates. Geologists generally refer to these evolving plates as the Nubian Plate and the Somali Plate.
Today these rifts and faults are seen as distinct, although connected, but originally, the Great Rift Valley was thought to be a single feature that extended from Lebanon in the north to Mozambique in the south, where it constitutes one of two distinct physiographic provinces of the East African mountains. The junction of these three rifts is called the Afar Triple Junction.
The East African Rift follows the Red Sea to the end before turning inland into the Ethiopian highlands , dividing the country into two large and adjacent but separate mountainous regions. In Kenya, Uganda, and the fringes of South Sudan, the Great Rift runs along two separate branches that are joined to each other only at their southern end, in Southern Tanzania along its border with Zambia.
It contains the Rift Valley lakes , which include some of the deepest lakes in the world up to 1, metres 4, ft deep at Lake Tanganyika. Lake Victoria is considered to be part of the rift valley system although it actually lies between the two branches. All of the African Great Lakes were formed as the result of the rift, and most lie in territories within the rift. In Kenya , the valley is deepest to the north of Nairobi.
What Is the Great Rift Valley? – A Natural Wonder with a Rich History
As the lakes in the Eastern Rift have no outlet to the sea and tend to be shallow, they have a high mineral content as the evaporation of water leaves the salts behind. For example, Lake Magadi has high concentrations of soda sodium carbonate and Lake Elmenteita , Lake Bogoria , and Lake Nakuru are all strongly alkaline , while the freshwater springs supplying Lake Naivasha are essential to support its current biological variety.
The southern section of the Rift Valley includes Lake Malawi , the third-deepest freshwater body in the world, which reaches metres 2, ft in depth and separates the Nyassa plateau of Northern Mozambique from Malawi. The rift extends southwards from Lake Malawi as the valley of the Shire River , which flows from the lake into the Zambezi River.
Great Rift Valley, Ethiopia - Wikipedia
The rift continues south of the Zambezi as the Urema Valley of central Mozambique. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version.
What is the Great Rift Valley and why is it important?
In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikivoyage Wikidata item. Continuous geographic trench from Asia to Southeast Africa. For other uses, see Great Rift Valley disambiguation. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Theoretical extent [ edit ]. Asia [ edit ]. Further information: Sinai Peninsula. Africa [ edit ].
Main article: East African Rift.