Volcanic and geochemical evolution of the Ethiopian Rift in East Africa

埃塞俄比亚的裂谷暴露了地球上一些最活跃、最具潜在危险但却鲜为人知的火山。鉴于我们对软流圈熔体产生和地壳结构的异常详细的地球物理了解，裂谷是了解活动大陆裂谷中岩浆活动、近地表侵入和火山活动的时空变化的理想场所。裂谷暴露了裂谷发育的不同阶段，导致火山记录中存在着广泛的地球化学多样性，但这些变化在时间和空间上仍有待定量评估。该项目的主要目的是充分整合我们对裂谷地区岩石学和地球化学变异性的理解，以检验有关地幔热柱、亏损地幔和地壳同化作用的假设，以及自大约3000万年前裂谷开始以来的裂谷分段。重点将放在埃塞俄比亚北部从阿卢托火山到多芬火山的裂谷。这项研究将结合详细的实地考察、遥感、地质年代学以及高精度的地球化学和同位素技术，以解决主要裂谷火山是如何演化的。这项对埃塞俄比亚裂谷的研究将提供对其他火山的洞察，在这些火山中，构造过程对火山活动的速度和特征至关重要。

The Ethiopian rift exposes some of the most active and potentially hazardous but poorly understood volcanoes on Earth. Given our exceptionally detailed geophysical understanding of melt production in the asthenosphere and of crustal structure, the rift is an ideal place to understand spatial and temporal variations in magmatism, near-surface intrusion and volcanism in an active continental rift. The rift exposes different stages of rift development, resulting in wide geochemical diversity in the volcanic record, but these variations remain to be quantitatively assessed in time and space. The principal aim of this project is to fully integrate our understanding of petrological and geochemical variability across the rift to test hypotheses concerning the role of mantle plumes, depleted mantle and crustal assimilation and rift segmentation since rifting began roughly 30 million years ago. A focus will be in the northern Ethiopian rift from Aluto to Dofen volcanoes. The study will combine detailed fieldwork, remote sensing, geochronology, and high precision geochemical and isotopic techniques to address how major rift volcanoes evolve. This study of the Ethiopian rift will provide insights into other volcanoes where tectonic processes are critical to the rates and characteristics of volcanism.