Marda Project, Ethiopia

The Marda Project is my collective name for a number of inter-related projects dealing with volcanism and rifting in SE Ethiopia, south and east of the Afar and the Ethiopian Rift respectively. 

My interest in the Tertiary volcanism in SE Ethiopia began while working in the Ogaden Basin in the 1970s. I was particularly fascinated by the volcanic landforms of SE Ethiopia, especially the Marda Fault Zone and its volcanic ‘cap’, the holy and historic Mt Abulcassim near Sheik Hussein, and the meandering basalt hills that are exhumed river-canyon-filling lava flows.

In 2007, while working in Ethiopia again, I met Dr Daniel Mege, then at the University of Nantes, France, and learnt of his similar interest.   We worked together in 2008 under a co-operative arrangement with Malaysian oil company Pexco, and since then have conducted the research independently. We have made numerous field trips into SE Ethiopia, both helicopter-supported and vehicle-based, collecting samples for ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar dating and geochemical and petrological analyses.  The helicopter surveys allowed us to sample and photograph many very remote outcrops in the eastern Ogaden.

Special aspects of our work and some of the significant results are discussed on linked pages or as separate projects. The Ogaden data have also been used in work by Dr Mege and others in analyses of the surface of Mars.

Our expanded team - Fred Jourdan (Curtin University, Perth) Tyrone Rooney (University of Michigan), Jacques-Maris Bardintzeff (Universite Paris-Sud, and Gezahegn Yirgu (Addis Ababa University) - is currently preparing a large paper presenting the results of our work.

Attachments

Large-scale gravitational spreading in Southeast Ethiopia. — 35.4 MB PDF File Download
Spectrometric characterization of basaltic rock alteration in cold and wet (Baikalian) and hot and dry (Ogadenian) conditions. — 131.6 KB PDF File Download
Inferring alteration conditions on Mars: Insights from near-infrared spectra of terrestrial basalts altered in cold and hot arid environments. — 1.9 MB PDF File Download

Sub Projects