Geoffrey Charles Plume King

• PhD
• Paris Institute of Earth Physics

Our aim in this chapter is to examine the reconstruction of physical landscapes in rift settings and their relevance to archaeological interpretation and to reflect on the challenges and opportunities of such research, with particular reference to the Kenyan sector of the East African Rift. We focus on the mapping of physical landforms and how they...

Our aim in this chapter is to examine the reconstruction of physical landscapes in rift settings and their relevance to archaeological interpretation and to reflect on the challenges and opportunities of such research, with particular reference to the Kenyan sector of the East African Rift. We focus on the mapping of physical landforms and how they...

This chapter examines the relationship between the changing geomorphology of physical land forms in tectonically and volcanically active regions, topography, soil nutrients, movements of large mammals, and patterns of human subsistence and dispersal in the early stages of human evolution. We place particular emphasis on the ways in which minor topo...

This chapter examines the relationship between the changing geomorphology of physical land forms in tectonically and volcanically active regions, topography, soil nutrients, movements of large mammals, and patterns of human subsistence and dispersal in the early stages of human evolution. We place particular emphasis on the ways in which minor topo...

Animal movements in the tectonically active East African Rift Valley today are influenced by a combination of topography and soil nutrient distribution (soil edaphics). These patterns would have been the same in the past when hominins inhabited the area. Our study in the Kenya Rift shows that soil edaphics and active rift structures play a key role...

Climate shifts at decadal scales can have environmental consequences, and therefore, identifying areas that act as environmental refugia is valuable in understanding future climate variability. Here we illustrate how, given appropriate geohydrology, a rift basin and its catchment can buffer vegetation response to climate signals on decadal time-sca...

Our aim in this paper is to create a large-scale palaeoenvironmental and spatio-temporal framework for interpreting human land use and exploitation of large mammals in the Central Kenya Rift over the past 2 million years, with particular reference to the Nakuru-Elmenteita-Naivasha basin and its adjacent rift flanks on the Kinangop Plateau and Mau e...

Animal movements in the Kenya Rift Valley today are influenced by a combination of topography and trace nutrient distribution. These patterns would have been the same in the past when hominins inhabited the area. We use this approach to create a landscape reconstruction of Olorgesailie, a key site in the East African Rift with abundant evidence of...

We match stone artefact distributions and assemblage compositions at the local geographical scale to measures of both complex topography and environmental history, as suggested by the work of Bailey and King. By comparing two study regions that have different topographic complexity measures, one in western New South Wales, Australia, and the other...

Fossil remains are embedded in a continually evolving landscape. Earth scientists have the methods and approaches to study the processes that shape the landscape at various temporal and spatial scales. Some of these methods can generate insights that are of potential use for researchers in other fields, such as archaeology and palaeoanthropology. H...

Earthquakes occurring in oblique tectonic settings often partition between several faults that accommodate different components of the total motion. The 2002 Mw 7.9 Denali strike-slip earthquake, which azimuth varies by more than 50° over the 341 km total rupture length, offers a unique opportunity to look at partitioning in details, thanks to a la...

Human bipedalism and the importance of terrestriality - Volume 88 Issue 341 - Isabelle C. Winder, Geoffrey C.P. King, Maud H. Devès, Geoffrey N. Bailey

We explore the relationship between the edaphic potential of soils and the mineral properties of the underlying geology as a means of mapping the differential productivity of different areas of the Pleistocene landscape for large herbivores. These factors strongly control the health of grazing animals irrespective of the particular types of vegetat...

In most fault systems the direction of the relative plate motion is oblique to the azimuth of the existing faults. Hence, during earthquakes the displacement may be partitioned between several faults that accommodate different components of the total motion. Here, we quantify the effect of the obliquity of the fault system relatively to the plate-m...

The quality of soils (edaphics) and the associated vegetation strongly controls the health of grazing animals. Until now, this has hardly been appreciated by paleo-anthropologists who only take into account the availability of water and vegetation in landscape reconstruction attempts. A lack of understanding the importance of the edaphics of a regi...

Over 3,000 shell-midden sites have been located in the southern Red Sea using digital-imaging techniques, in a combination of palaeo-landscape reconstruction and remote survey. The primary methods include digital-imaging techniques – high-resolution satellite images, false colour images and radar data. Surveying and recording these sites during exc...

Why did humans walk upright? Previous models based on adaptions to forest or savannah are challenged here in favour of physical incentives presented by steep rugged terrain – the kind of tectonically varied landscape that has produced early hominin remains. “Scrambler man” pursued his prey up hill and down dale and in so doing became that agile, sp...

Archaeological studies of human settlement in its wider landscape setting usually focus on climate change as the principal environmental driver of change in the physical features of the landscape, even on the long time scales of early human evolution. We emphasize that landscapes evolve dynamically due to an interplay of processes occurring over di...

The archaeology of the Arabian Peninsula is pivotal to understanding the timing and mode of dispersals of modern human populations from Africa into Eurasia. Emphasis on the Nile-Levant dispersal route has been challenged by evidence supporting a Southern Route, through the Bab al Mandab Straits. Yet, despite recent key developments, our understandi...

OPEN ACCESS Web: http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/bailey334 Interest in the processes by which human populations expanded out of Africa after about 2 million years ago to colonise the rest of the world has never been higher in the scientific and public consciousness, thanks to new fossil and archaeological finds, palaeoclimatic data and DNA-based in...

Archaeological studies of human settlement in its wider landscape setting usually focus on climate change as the principal environmental driver of change in the physical features of the landscape, even on the long time scales of early human evolution. We emphasize that landscapes evolve dynamically due to an interplay of processes occurring over di...

The archaeology of the Arabian Peninsula is pivotal to the understanding of the timing and mode of the earliest dispersals of modern human populations from Africa into Eurasia. Traditional emphasis on the Nile-Levant dispersal route has been challenged by growing evidence supporting a Southern Route, through the Bab al Mandab Straits (e.g. Beyin 20...

Magmatic accretion at slow-spreading mid-ocean ridges exhibits specific features. Although magma supply is focused at the centre of second-order segments, melts are episodically distributed along the rift toward segment ends by lateral dyke intrusions. It has been previously suggested that an along-axis downward topographic slope away from the magm...

On November 21, 2004, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake occurred offshore, 10 km south of Les Saintes archipelago in Guadeloupe (French West Indies). There were more than 30000 aftershocks recorded in the following two years, most of them at shallow depth near the islands of the archipelago. The main shock and its main aftershock of February 14, 2005 (Mw...

The Earth's lithosphere behaves as a strain softening elasto-plastic material. In the laboratory, such materials are known to deform in a brittle or a ductile manner depending on the applied geometric boundary conditions. In the lithosphere however, the importance of boundary conditions in controlling the deformation style has been largely ignored....

Studies of the impact of physical environment on human evolution usually focus on climate as the main external forcing agent of evolutionary and cultural change. In this paper we focus on changes in the physical character of the landscape driven by geophysical processes as an equally potent factor. Most of the landscapes where finds of early human...

Seismicity released during lateral dike intrusions in the Manda Hararo-Dabbahu Rift (Afar, Ethiopia) provides indirect insight into the distribution and evolution of tensile stress along this magma-assisted divergent plate boundary. In this paper, 5 dike intrusions among the 14 that form the 2005-present rifting episode are analyzed with local and...

We examine the links between geomorphological processes, specific landscape features, surface water drainage, and the creation of suitable habitats for hominins. The existence of mosaic (i.e., heterogeneous) habitats within hominin site landscape reconstructions is typically explained using models of the riverine and gallery forest settings, or the...

For most of human existence on this planet over the past 2 million years, sea level has been substantially lower than the present and has swung through changes of more than 100 m in response to the glacial–interglacial climatic cycle. At a time when modern society is increasingly concerned about the potentially destructive impact over the coming de...

We explore the possible genetic link between continental deformation and magma genesis. Taking the example of two regions of high deformation, the Eurasian-Arabian and Eurasian-Indian collision zones, we observe that magmatism started coevally with or shortly after the onset of collision and has migrated in loose association with the development of...

We explore the possible genetic link between continental deformation and magma genesis. Taking the example of two regions of high deformation, the Eurasian-Arabian and Eurasian-Indian collision zones, we observe that magmatism started coevally with or shortly after the onset of collision and has migrated in loose association with the development of...

The Earth's lithosphere can be regarded as a strain softening elasto-plastic material. In the lab, such materials have been shown to deform in a brittle or a ductile manner depending on the applied geometric boundary conditions. Deformation in the lithosphere is usually thought to depend only on pressure, temperature and material composition with v...

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data spanning the time intervals separating thirteen dike intrusions in the Manda Hararo-Dabbahu rift (Afar, Ethiopia) from 2005 to 2009 show that transient deformation occurs in the inter-diking period. This deformation can be explained by the presence of seven inflating or deflating pressure source...

Thirteen dike intrusions in the Manda Hararo rift, Afar (Ethiopia), from September 2005 to June 2009, studied using an extensive interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data set, provide insight into the mechanics of a major active rift. Kinematic inversions of InSAR data reveal that dikes opened by 0.8–3.5 m at an average 5 km depth, with...

Tectonic-stretching models have been previously proposed to explain the process of continental break-up through the example of the Asal Rift, Djibouti, one of the few places where the early stages of seafloor spreading can be observed. In these models, deformation is distributed starting at the base of a shallow seismogenic zone, in which sub-verti...

The M w 7.8 Kokoxili earthquake of 14 November 2001, which ruptured a 450-km-long stretch of the sinistral Kunlun strike-slip fault, at the northeastern edge of the Tibet plateau, China, ranks as the largest strike-slip event ever recorded instrumentally in Asia. Newly available high-resolution satellite HRS images (pixel size 1 m) acquired in the...

This paper discusses the relationship between dynamic landscape change resulting from tectonic activity and patterns of human land use and human development. Archaeological studies of human settlement in its wider landscape setting usually focus on climate change as the principal environmental driver of change in the physical features of the landsc...

This paper examines the relationship between complex and tectonically active landscapes and patterns of human evolution. We show how active tectonics can produce dynamic landscapes with geomorphological and topographic features that may be critical to long-term patterns of hominin land use but that are not typically addressed in landscape reconstru...

[1] Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data spanning the time intervals separating thirteen dike intrusions in the Manda Hararo–Dabbahu rift (Afar, Ethiopia) from 2005 to 2009 show that transient deformation occurs in the inter-diking period. This deformation can be explained by the presence of seven inflating or deflating pressure so...

Seismotectonic methods allowing quantitative measures of the frequency and severity of earthquakes have greatly advanced over the last 30 years, aided by high-resolution imagery, digital topography and modern techniques for dating. During the same period, deterministic models based on the physics of earthquakes (Coulomb stress interactions) have be...

On November 21, 2004, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake occurred offshore, 10-km south of Les Saintes archipelago in Guadeloupe (FWI). The ensuing seismic sequence lasted more than two years, with several tens of earthquakes still recorded monthly today by the Lesser Antilles monitoring network. There were more than 30,000 aftershocks, most of them at sha...

From Australopithecus to Homo Our genus Homo is thought to have evolved a little more than 2 million years ago from the earlier hominid Australopithecus . But there are few fossils that provide detailed information on this transition. Berger et al. (p. 195 ; see the cover) now describe two partial skeletons, including most of the skull, pelvis, and...

Volcanism associated with major strike-slip faults is characterised by a patchy spatial distribution of mainly monogenetic edifices. The geochemical signature of the magmas involved shows they resulted from independent melting of the crust and/or the lithospheric mantle. We adopt a new approach to explain this volcanism. We show that sufficient hea...

Our knowledge of lithospheric rheology comes mostly from laboratory data using small-scale samples that are extrapolated to crustal and lithospheric scales, which requires careful analysis of the differences in boundary conditions. In the search for constraints on large-scale continental rheology, one useful observation has been neglected. That is...

The DoRA project aims to conduct complementary studies in two volcano-tectonic rifts in the Afar Depression. In Northern Afar, the Wal’is Dabbahu Rift (WD, Ethiopia) is currently undergoing a major rifting episode. This event started in September 2005 with a significant seismic activity. InSAR data revealed the injection of a 65 km-long mega-dyke t...

1] We provide a new set of complementary geodetic data for the 2005 rifting event of Afar (Ethiopia). Interferometric synthetic aperture radar and subpixel correlations of synthetic aperture radar and SPOT images allow us to deduce 3-D surface displacement unambiguously. We determine the geometry of the dike and neighboring magma chambers and inver...

Lebanon, located on a 160-km-long transpressional bend of the left-lateral Levant (Dead Sea) fault system (LFS), has been the site of infrequent but large earthquakes, including one submarine, tsunamigenic event. The main objective of the Shalimar marine survey was to characterize and map active deformation offshore of Lebanon using a range of geop...

The deformation and 40Ar-39Ar dating of recent volcanism, that remarkably sits across the North Anatolian Fault eastern termination in Turkey, together with previous studies, put strong constraints on the long-term evolution of the fault. We argue that after a first phase of 10 Ma, characterized by a slip rate of about 3 mm/a, and during which most...

Co-seismic slip values along a strike-slip rupture are found to be very irregular with variations up to one order of magnitude. Data usually scattered and sparse, are more dense and continuous with slip functions derived from InSAR or image correlations. Whether the fast variations in slip along strike reveals long-lived structures of the fault pla...

At mid-oceanic ridges, the accommodation of far-field plate divergence occurs along narrow magmatic rift segments (often

The occurrence of magmatism in the vicinity of large strike-slip faults, such as the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey or the Altyn-Tagh and Kunlun Faults in Tibet, provides constraints on models of continental deformation. The volcanic edifices are spatially associated with the faults and eruptions often correlate in time with faulting activity sugg...

We use an elastic-plastic model to explain the evolution of a major continental strike-slip fault, the North Anatolian Fault (NAF), associated with the westward extrusion of Anatolia in the Arabia Eurasia collision zone. The NAF has grown for the last 10 Myrs by westward propagation of its tip from Karliova (eastern Turkey) toward the hellenic subd...

An exceptional rifting episode is currently under way in Afar (Ethiopia). Available geodetic data covers not only the main rifting event of September 2005, but also a series of at least 10 smaller events in 2006-2008. These are characterised by rapid dike intrusion/inflation at depth (within hours), and motion on two sets of conjugate normal fault...

When an earthquake occurs there is an overall drop in stress which is then re-established by tectonic loading prior to the next event. However in some regions, close to the earthquake, stress increases. It is for this reason that aftershocks occur and one large earthquake can trigger another. Although earthquakes only relieve shear stress, slip is...

The long-standing conflict between the predictions of elastic dislocation models and the observation that average coseismic slip increases with rupture length is resolved with application of a simple displacement-depth function and the assumption that the base of the seismogenic zone does not result from the onset of viscous relaxation but rather a...

Co-seismic slip values along a strike-slip rupture are found to be very irregular with variations up to one order of magnitude. Data usually scattered and sparse, are now becoming more dense and continuous with slip functions derived from InSAR or image correlations. Whether the fast variations in slip along strike reveals long- lived structures of...

The Lebanese Restraining Bend (LRB), principal irregularity along the left-lateral Dead Sea Transform (DST), is a ~25? clockwise inflexion of the Yammouneh Fault (Y.F.), through-going branch of the DST between Galilee and Syria. This is a region of high and broad relief, with the highest mountain range of the Levant (Mt-Lebanon, 3100m asl), whose e...

Knowledge on large earthquakes (M >= 7.0), geology and fault kinematics is used to analyse conditions that favour isolated seismicity, clustered earthquakes or propagating sequences along the North Anatolian Fault (NAF) and the Sea of Marmara pull-apart. The overall NAF-Marmara fault system is one of the most appropriate on Earth to document fault...

We examine some long-standing assumptions about the early use of coastlines and marine resources and their contribution to the pattern of early human dispersal, and focus on the southern Red Sea Basin and the proposed southern corridor of movement between Africa and Arabia across the Bab al-Mandab Straits. We reconstruct relative sea levels in ligh...

The GRACE satellite mission has been measuring the Earth's gravity field and its temporal variations since 2002 April. Although these variations are mainly due to mass transfer within the geofluid envelops, they also result from mass displacements associated with phenomena including glacial isostatic adjustment and earthquakes. However, these last...

Large earthquakes can be preceded by a period of accelerating seismic activity of moderate-sized earthquakes. This phenomenon, usually termed accelerating moment release, has yet to be clearly understood. A new mathematical formulation of accelerating moment release is obtained from simple stress transfer considerations, following the recently prop...

In the Epirus region of North-west Greece, spring flows in villages have reduced dramatically over the last few decades, in some cases with serious economic consequences. We argue here that this has resulted from the major reduction of grazing by mountain goats over the same period together with other associated land-use changes. Normally such a co...

We extend a model of a two-dimensional self-healing slip pulse, propagating dynamically in steady state with slip-weakening failure criterion, to the supershear regime in order to study the off-fault stressing induced by such a slip pulse and investigate features unique to the supershear range. Specifically, we show that there exists a nonattenuati...

Scientists examine tectonic faulting on all scales—from seismic fault slip to the formation of mountain ranges—and discuss its connection to a wide range of global phenomena, including long-term climate change and evolution. Tectonic faults are sites of localized motion, both at the Earth's surface and within its dynamic interior. Faulting is direc...

SummaryA new type of laser strainmeter has been operated in Queensbury tunnel, Yorkshire, England. It has design features which possess fundamental and practical advantages over other laser strainmeters which have been constructed. The system uses two helium-neon lasers which operate at 633 nm. One illuminates a Michelson interferometer with a 54 m...

Earth strain has been measured at Queensbury tunnel in Yorkshire, England, for twenty-eight months with a simple invar wire strainmeter. The power and phase spectra of this record shows that the strain at this site is dominated by water loading of the tides in the shallow seas round the British Isles. These results are explained if the strainmeter...

Long-period horizontal seismometers, tiltmeters and strainmeters are influenced by inhomogeneous rock properties in the site region. These inhomogeneities interact with applied stress fields to create local strains and tilts that differ from those averaged over greater distances. These effects have been called strain-strain and strain-tilt coupling...

Mikumo & Aki attempted to determine phase velocities at a single site using seismometers and strainmeters oriented in the same horizontal direction. For the five earthquakes studied, they found a good agreement with the theoretically predicted velocities for body waves and, in some cases, for surface waves. Rodgers showed that for long periods (> 1...

We discuss work completed to date on the 1980 Algerian earthquake, and introduce a description of the earthquake in terms of rupture propagation using the nomenclature of fracture mechanics. Field and teleseismic studies have shown the earthquake fault to be divided into three major thrust segments: rupture began at the SW end of the system and pro...

This paper presents a detailed study of teleseismically and locally recorded foreshocks and aftershocks of the 1978 Thessaloniki earthquake sequence and discusses the relations between the locations and mechanisms of these shocks and the three-dimensional geometry of faulting in the source region. Sixteen teleseismically recorded events were reloca...

Attention has recently been focused on the structure and composition of the lower crust in continental areas. It is generally believed that, except in special circumstances, ductile behaviour below mid-crustal depths precludes the brittle processes that cause earthquakes. The 1984 July 19 earthquake in North Wales occurred at the unexpected depth o...

Geophysical strainmeters are commonly installed in underground cavities. These cavities can cause considerable modification to the local strain field. Instruments have been installed in Queensbury tunnel, Yorkshire to examine this effect, and there is a good agreement between the predicted effect of a cavity and the observed data. Strainmeters inst...

Instrumental measurements of the rate of movement of a major Himalayan overthrust are reported. The data are interpreted to determine the slip vector of the Nahan thrust. The horizontal component of the slip vector has a magnitude close to one centimetre per year and is orientated 132° E (the movement is compressional). Absence of creep events on t...

Strain meters aligned along Queensbury Tunnel show amplitude variations of the diurnal tides of up to a factor of three, with smaller variations in phase. These observations are not easily explained because the semi-diurnal tides have different and smaller variations. The strain variations may be caused by local geological structures, but more obse...

Records for seven weeks are presented

We describe the seismo–volcanic crisis that occurred in northern Afar in late 2005, which involved 15 earthquakes greater than M5 and a small explosive silicic eruption from a vent called Da'Ure (at 12.651°N., 40.519°N) close to Dabbahu volcano. The purpose is to pull together the different sources of information into a coherent preliminary interpr...

A nearest neighbor fragmentation model, previously developed to explain observations of power law particle distributions with fractal dimension Df=2.6 in low-strain fault gouge and breccia, is extended to the case of large strains to explain recent observations of Df=3.0 in highly strained cataclasites. At low strains, the elimination of same-sized...

In September 2005, a magmato-tectonic episode initiated in Western Afar (Ethiopia) when a swarm of moderate magnitude earthquakes (M

It has been suggested that large earthquakes are preceded by a systematic increase in the level of background seismicity in a broad region around the impending event. This rate change, known as "accelerating moment release" (AMR), is believed to be a result of stress accumulation in the final stage of the seismic cycle. A simple backslip dislocatio...

Recent work has suggested that Accelerating Moment Release (AMR) can help to identify when a stretch of fault is approaching failure without any knowledge of the seismic history of the region. AMR has been identified in the regions around the Sumatra Subduction system that must have been stressed before the 26 December 2004 and 28 March 2005 earthq...

GRACE satellite mission has been measuring the Earth's time-varying gravity field since 2002. If the temporal gravity variations mainly result from mass transfers within the geofluid envelops, they also result from mass redistributions associated with earthquakes. Here we show that the gravity signature of the December 2004 and March 2005 Sumatra e...

A progressive increase of seismic activity distributed over a wide region around a future earthquake epicenter is termed accelerating moment release (AMR). This phenomenon has been observed in several studies over the last 15 years, although there is no consensus about the physical origin of the effect. In a recent hypothesis known as the stress ac...

The authors propose a new model for the origins of humans and their ecological adaptation. The evolutionary stimulus lies not in the savannah but in broken, hilly rough country where the early hominins could hunt and hide. Such ‘roughness’, generated by tectonic and volcanic movement characterises not only the African rift valley but probably the w...

A promising approach to assessing seismic hazards has been to combine the concept of seismic gaps with Coulomb-stress change modeling to refine short-term earthquake probability estimates. However, in practice the large uncertainties in the seismic histories of most tectonically active regions limit this approach since a stress increase is only imp...

The slip distribution of the Mw ∼ 7.8 Kokoxili (Tibet, 2001) earthquake has been measured at high resolution using optical correlation of satellite images and provides both the parallel and perpendicular components of the horizontal co-seismic slip. This reveals a variation of the horizontal slip at a scale of ∼ 20 km along-strike. Anti-correlation...

A promising approach to assessing seismic hazards has been to combine the concept of seismic gaps with coulomb stress change modeling to refine short-term earthquake probability estimates. However, in practice the large uncertainties in the seismic histories of most tectonically active regions limit this approach since a stress increase is only imp...

We extend a model of a two-dimensional self-healing slip pulse, propagating dynamically in steady-state with a slip-weakening failure criterion, to the supershear regime, in order to study the off-fault stressing induced by such a slip pulse and investigate features unique to the supershear range. Specifically, we show that there exists a non-atten...

It has been suggested that large earthquakes are preceded by a systematic increase in the level of background seismicity in a broad region around the impending event. This rate change, known as "accelerating moment release" (AMR), has been proposed as a precursory signal that could be used to forecast large earthquakes. Bowman and King [GRL, 2001]...

Over the last three decades a host of information on rifting process relating to the geological and thermal structure, long-time scale deformation (Quaternary and Holocene) and rifting cycle displacement across the Asal–Ghoubbet rift has been made available. These data are interpreted with a two-dimensional thermo-mechanical model that incorporates...

Millennial slip rates have been determined for the Altyn Tagh fault (ATF) at three sites near Aksay (∼94°E) in northeastern Tibet by dating fluvial channels and terrace riser offsets with radiocarbon and 10Be-26Al surface exposure dating. Up to nine main surfaces are defined on the basis of morphology, elevation, and dating. The abandonment age of...