SEISMOTANZ'07

Understanding the forces that initiate continental break-up needs to find sites where magmatism and rifting interact. The thermal structure of the mantle and the crust, the products of partial melting, the position(s) and nature(s) of the inherited structures (cratonic blocks, old lithospheric sutures) play a key role on earthquake genesis and have to be studied into details using different, multi-scale, approaches. The North Tanzanian Divergence (NTD) is one of the unique areas in the world where such objectives can be achieved. Two main questions are driving our project : (1) Is there a characteristic plume impact at depth that modifies the rheology and strength of the lithosphere? (2) Can we identify there, through seismicity and kinematic indicators, the dimension of main active faults and the way deformation is occurring We installed a temporary network of 34 stations for 6 months to follow more precisely the micro-seismicity and infer crust structure.