Seismic activity is tearing Africa apart and scientists are geared up to watch the ripping landscape in an unprecedented set of observations.

The African and Arabian plates meet in the remote Afar desert of Northern Ethiopia and have been going through a rifting process — at a speed of less than 1 inch per year — for the past 30 million years. This rifting formed the 186-mile Afar depression and the Red Sea.

Occasionally, the buildup of pressure can lead to bursts of cataclysmic activity. In September 2005, a chain of earthquakes caused hundreds of deep fractures. In some spots the ground shifted some 26 feet, and magma, enough to fill a football stadium more than 2000 times, was injected into a crack between the two plates.

Should the processes occurring today continue, the map of Africa will be forever changed, the researchers say.

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