U. Achauer et al., NEW IDEAS ON THE KENYA RIFT BASED ON THE INVERSION OF THE COMBINED DATASET OF THE 1985 AND 1989 90 SEISMIC TOMOGRAPHY EXPERIMENTS/, Tectonophysics, 236(1-4), 1994, pp. 305-329
A tomographic image of the P-velocity structure beneath the central pa
rt of the Kenya rift has been obtained from the inversion of the combi
ned data sets of the 1985 and 1989/90 teleseismic experiments. This in
vestigation confirms the three-dimensional character of this rift stru
cture. In the uppermost mantle a steep-sided low-velocity body indicat
es the presence of partial melt. The maximum anomaly is located where
the NW-SE-trending Aswa suture zone of Proterozoic age crosses the N-S
-oriented Miocene rift in the area of the Kenya Dome. It is suggested
that the development of the rift in this area is controlled by two fac
tors: (1) the old NW-SE-trending Aswa shear zone and (2) a narrow wedg
e of asthenosphere beneath the rift in the area of the Kenya Dome, whi
ch is a clear indication of upper mantle dynamics due to asthenospheri
c upwelling and which is, at least partially, the driving force of the
rift's formation.