Chapter 1. Introduction to the Albertine Rift

Continental rifting is a fundamental geological process that has been responsible for breaking supercontinents apart and opening new ocean basins throughout Earth's history and the East African Rift System (EARS) is the best active example of this happening in the world today. The Albertine Rift lies at the northern end of the Western Arm of the EARS, consisting primarily of the Lake Albert and Lake Edward basins as they pass along the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This Memoir describes the key geomorphological features found in the Albertine Rift Valley at the present day, identifying the sedimentary dynamic elements that dovetail together to characterize the dominant depositional environments in these early continental rift basins. These are then used to interpret the Pliocene–Holocene sedimentary sequences, documented during geological field surveys over an eight-year period, exposed around the onshore parts of the Lake Albert and Lake Edward rift valleys. Ultimately, the sedimentary dynamics of the Albertine Rift, and the stacking of its 3D stratigraphic architecture, is shown to beat to the rhythm of oscillating global glacial–interglacial climatic cyclicity and how this affects the Equatorial Tropics of Africa.