Characterising the volcanic and geochemical record of continental breakup in Afar

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The Afar Region, Ethiopia, exposes some of the most active but poorly understood volcanoes on Earth. Well-known examples include Erta-Ale (with its active lava lake) and the Dabbahu region, which was subject to major dyke intrusion from 2005-2010. Afar is undergoing a transition from continental rifting to seafloor spreading, resulting in wide geochemical diversity in the volcanic record of rifting. The principal goal of this project is to greatly improve our understanding of petrological and geochemical variability across the Afar depression, thereby testing hypotheses concerning the mechanisms of magma melting associated with abrupt lithospheric thinning in northern Afar [1]. To this end, the study will compare volcanoes in southern Afar to those in northern Afar such as Alu-Dalafilla, utilising an extensive catalogue of rock specimens housed at the University of Pisa. The project will involve remote sensing (using ArcGIS) to place samples in a physical volcanological framework, coupled with the application of petrological, geochemical (major and trace element analysis) and isotopic techniques [2]. Together, these approaches will allow us to test whether anomalously high temperatures [3] or plate thinning ultimately drives mantle melting.