![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sep. 18th, 2014 at 8:31 PM
Landscape of the Senetti Plateau
In southern Ethiopia there is a large plateau, an area of high-ground, known as the Senetti Plain. It sits within the larger territory known as the Bale Mountains National Park, and some of the landscape extremes are represented in this photo.
The Bale Mountains are an igneous province, covered by lavas that poured out of the ground over 30 million years ago. The cone you see in the distance is almost certainly the remnant of one of the volcanic centers that sourced these large lava outpourings, eroded after eons of silence.
One other major force has acted on this area since the lava poured out: glaciation. The cones sit at elevations of over 4000 meters (13,000 feet). Consequently, when the glaciers expanded worldwide during the ice ages of the Pleistocene, the entire Senetti Plateau was covered and sculpted by ice. The generally flat lands you see in front of you have been polished by the actions of ice.
The presence of these volcanoes is an interesting story as well. There is active volcanism in this part of Africa today due to the East African Rift; Africa being pulled apart by tectonic forces, but these rocks are much older than that. It is possible that these rocks relate to the forces that caused Africa and the Arabian plate to begin breaking up in the first place.
Some have hypothesized a plume of hot material rose up from the deep mantle tens of millions of years ago and ran into Africa. Some of that material melted, forming lavas like these, but the large mass of it just pushed against the base of Africa, eventually forcing the continent to begin breaking apart.
The lonely tree you see in the foreground is a giant lobelia, a species common and unique to this part of Africa.
-JBB
Image credit: Rod Waddington
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rod_waddington/9995206716
Read more:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17391409
http://balemountains.org/the-park/geology-glaciation-and-hydrology/
http://www.ewca.gov.et/en/node/17
(via The Earth Story FB page)