{"id":22944,"date":"2024-04-30T02:04:58","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T20:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=22944"},"modified":"2025-04-06T23:08:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-06T17:38:20","slug":"great-rift-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/great-rift-valley\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Rift Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Great Rift Valley:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It is one of the <strong>most extensive rifts<\/strong> on Earth\u2019s surface that runs <strong>along part of East Africa.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It runs for <strong>4,000 miles<\/strong> (6,400 kilometers), <strong>from Jordan<\/strong> in southwestern Asia <strong>to the coast of the Indian Ocean in<\/strong> central <strong>Mozambique<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>It runs <strong>across many countries<\/strong>: <strong>Eritrea<\/strong>, Djibouti, <strong>Ethiopia<\/strong>, <strong>Kenya<\/strong>, <strong>Tanzania<\/strong>, <strong>Uganda<\/strong>, Rwanda, Burundi, the <strong>Democratic Republic of the Congo<\/strong> (DRC), Malawi, Zambia, and <strong>Mozambique<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>It is <strong>part of<\/strong> a larger feature called the <strong>East African Rift System (EARS).<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Formation<\/strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>The valley is situated in a region where three tectonic plates meet.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>It was formed about <strong>40 million years ago when tectonic plates split <\/strong>and gave rise to the East African Rift.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The valley is 30 to 40 miles (48 to 64 kilometers) wide on average but reaches nearly 300 miles (480 kilometers) at its <strong>widest section in<\/strong> the <strong>Danakil Desert<\/strong> in northeastern Africa.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The steep walls of the valley rise about 3,000 feet (900 meters) above the valley floor. In some places there are cliffs that reach 9,000 feet (2,700 meters) high.<\/li>\n<li>The area is <strong>geologically active<\/strong> and <strong>features volcanoes<\/strong>, <strong>hot springs, geysers<\/strong>, and <strong>frequent earthquakes<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>A <strong>series of some thirty lakes<\/strong> lies along its length; the <strong>three largest in Africa<\/strong> are known as the <strong>Great Lakes<\/strong> and include <strong>Lake Tanganyika,<\/strong> the <strong>second deepest lake<\/strong> in the world, and <strong>Lake Victoria<\/strong>, the <strong>second-largest freshwater lake<\/strong> by surface area in the world.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Many of<strong> Africa\u2019s highest mountains<\/strong>\u2014including <strong>Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya,<\/strong> and <strong>Mount Margherita<\/strong>\u2014are in ranges fronting the Rift Valley.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What is a Rift Valley?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A rift valley is a <strong>lowland region<\/strong> that <strong>forms where Earth\u2019s tectonic plates move apart<\/strong>, or rift.<\/li>\n<li>Rift valleys are <strong>found on land and <\/strong>at the <strong>bottom of the ocean<\/strong>, where they are created by the process of seafloor spreading.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Rift valleys <strong>differ from river valleys<\/strong> and glacial valleys <strong>in that they are created by tectonic activity <\/strong>and not the process of erosion.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1: What are Tectonic Plates?<\/h3>\n<p>Tectonic plates are pieces of Earth&#8217;s crust and uppermost mantle, together referred to as the lithosphere. The plates consist of two principal types of material: oceanic crust (sima) and continental crust (sial).These plates lie on top of a partially molten layer of rock called the asthenosphere. Due to the convection of the asthenosphere and lithosphere, the plates move relative to each other.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.news18.com\/world\/42-dead-as-dam-near-kenyas-rift-valley-bursts-8870666.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">42 Dead As Dam Near Kenya&#8217;s Rift Valley Bursts<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Great Rift Valley is one of the most extensive rifts on Earth\u2019s surface that runs along part of East Africa. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":22945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}