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.
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Acknowledgements
Envisat/ASAR data were systematically programmed and acquired through the ESA Cat-1 project no. C1P.3224. Interferograms were computed using DORIS software (Delft University of Technology). Precise orbits were provided by the Delft Institute of Earth Observation and Space Systems and ESA. We thank the Tanzania Survey and Mapping Department for their support of the October field expedition and the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology. We thank V. Cayol and Y. Fukushima for their contribution in analysing the ground deformations, F. Paganelli, J. Biggs and J. Keller for discussions and K. Feigl and F. Sigmundsson for their comments. We acknowledge support from the US National Science Foundation under grants EAR-0801801 and EAR-0538119, from the French INSU-CNRS DyETI programme and from the Belgian Science Policy under projects SAMAAV and Rukwa.
Author Contributions N.d’O., A.O. and F.K. planned the radar data acquisition and computed the interferograms; J.A., A.D., J.D., R.W.F. and J.P. designed the seismic experiment and collected and analysed the resulting data; D.D., A.S.M., B.S. and C.W. performed the field observations; E.S. and D.S.S. deployed the GPS equipment and processed the resulting data; C.E. provided tectonic context; E.C. performed the model calculations; E.C. and N.d’O. wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.
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Calais, E., d’Oreye, N., Albaric, J. et al. Strain accommodation by slow slip and dyking in a youthful continental rift, East Africa. Nature 456, 783–787 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07478
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07478
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