A team from the University of Miami, University of El Paso and University of Rochester have employed Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) images compiled over a decade to study volcanic activity in the African Rift. The study, published in Geology, studies the section of the rift in Kenya.

"The Kenyan Rift volcanoes are part of a larger Great Rift Valley complex that extends all the way from Mozambique to Djibouti; their presence in East Africa attests to the presence of magma reservoirs within the Earth's crust," says lead author Dr. Juliet Biggs, Rosenstiel Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Miami. "Our study detected signs of activity in only four of the 11 volcanoes in the area – Suswa, Menengai, Longonot and Paka – all within the borders of Kenya."

Small surface displacements, which are not visible to the naked eye, were captured using InSAR, a sophisticated satellite-based radar technique. Using images from European Space Agency satellites ERS and Envisat, the team was able to detect the smallest of surface displacements at a very high resolution. Overall, the events were short in duration and episodic rather than continuous, which means discrete pulses of magma were arriving at the crust, similar to a stop valve that is being turned on and off intermittently.

"The fact that these areas are so close to a major metropolitan area pose a challenge in terms of a large volcanic or seismic event," says co-author Cindy Ebinger. Suswa, Menengai and Longonot all are located in densely populated areas within 70 miles of Nairoibi.

The study also provides insight as to the geothermal potential of the region. Kenya was the first African country to build geothermal energy plants to generate the renewable alternative to coal and oil. The impact of harnessing such a resource could provide an important economic engine for the region.

"This study demonstrates the potential for using InSAR to measure active magmatic and tectonic phenomena in Africa, allowing us to watch the processes by which continents break apart," says Biggs, who has just begun a 2-year project at the Univeristy of Oxford, funded by the European Space Agency, to map the pattern of volcanic activity, dike intrusion and active faulting along the whole of the East African Rift.