![]() The East African Rift System is a divergent tectonic plate boundary splitting the African Plate into two: the Nubian and Somalian plates 1. It is rising at the triple junction, mingling the three branches of the East African Rift System 4, 5, 6. The Afar hotspot is located at the triple junction between the Red Sea rift, the Gulf of Aden, and the Ethiopian rift zone. ![]() 1a and S1), because of the last stage of continental rifting and the early stage of seafloor spreading 2, 3. The Afar rift, located at the northern tip of the East African Rift System 1, is a region with high crustal seismicity and active volcanoes (Figs. Similarly, these results suggest complex dynamics within the crust and lithosphere in the region of the Afar triple junction. These observations suggest that the crust and lithospheric mantle are mechanically decoupled beneath the environs of the East African Rift System. At longer periods, sampling the lithospheric mantle, the anisotropic pattern is quite different. At shorter periods that sample the crust, rift-parallel anisotropy is present in the vicinity of the rift, but in the central part of the rift, rift-normal anisotropy is found. Our results suggest that a layering of anisotropy is present around the East African Rift System. Here, we use earthquake seismic data to map Rayleigh-wave azimuthal anisotropy in the crust and lithospheric mantle beneath the East African Rift System. However, the vertical layering of anisotropy in this region is yet to be accurately determined. The average anisotropy obtained from shear-wave splitting measurements agrees with the surface motion recovered by geodetic analyses. The Afar triple junction accustoms the diverging plate dynamics between the Arabian, Nubian, and Somalian plates along the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and East African rifts.
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