Skip to Main content Skip to Navigation
Journal articles

Strain accommodation by slow slip and dyking in a youthful continental rift, East Africa

Eric Calais 1, * Nicolas d'Oreye 2 Julie Albaric 3 Anne Deschamps 4 Damien Delvaux 5 Jacques Déverchère 3 Cynthia Ebinger 6 Richard W. Ferdinand 7 Francois Kervyn 5 Athanas S. Macheyeki 8, 9 Anneleen Oyen 2, 10 Julie Perrot 3 Elifuraha Saria 11 Benoit Smets 5 D. Sarah Stamps 1 Christelle Wauthier 5, 12
* Corresponding author
1 Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences [West Lafayette]
2 Department of Geophysics/astrophysics
3 LDO - Domaines Océaniques
4 GEOAZUR 6526 - Géoazur
5 RMCA - Royal Museum for Central Africa [Tervuren]
6 Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences [Rochester]
7 Department of Geology
8 Department of Geology and Soil Science
9 Mineral Resource (Madini) Institute
10 TU Delft - Delft University of Technology
11 Department of Geomatics
12 Université de Liège
Abstract : Continental rifts begin and develop through repeated episodes of faulting and magmatism, but strain partitioning between faulting and magmatism during discrete rifting episodes remains poorly documented. In highly evolved rifts, tensile stresses from far-field plate motions accumulate over decades before being released during relatively short time intervals by faulting and magmatic intrusions1, 2, 3. These rifting crises are rarely observed in thick lithosphere during the initial stages of rifting. Here we show that most of the strain during the July–August 2007 seismic crisis in the weakly extended Natron rift, Tanzania, was released aseismically. Deformation was achieved by slow slip on a normal fault that promoted subsequent dyke intrusion by stress unclamping. This event provides compelling evidence for strain accommodation by magma intrusion, in addition to slip along normal faults, during the initial stages of continental rifting and before significant crustal thinning.
Document type :
Journal articles
Complete list of metadatas
https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-00346693
Contributor : Adminhal Univbrestbu <>
Submitted on : Friday, December 12, 2008 - 10:32:24 AM
Last modification on : Monday, October 12, 2020 - 11:10:18 AM

Links full text

openaccess

Identifiers

Collections

INSU | UNICE | CNRS | UNIV-BREST | GEOAZUR | OCA | UPMC | LGO | CMM | UNIV-COTEDAZUR | SORBONNE-UNIVERSITE

Citation

Eric Calais, Nicolas d'Oreye, Julie Albaric, Anne Deschamps, Damien Delvaux, et al.. Strain accommodation by slow slip and dyking in a youthful continental rift, East Africa. Nature, Nature Publishing Group, 2008, 456, pp.783-787. ⟨10.1038/nature07478⟩. ⟨insu-00346693⟩

Export

BibTeX TEI DC DCterms EndNote

Share

Metrics

Record views

610