Africa is being torn apart. And as Ethiopia's rift valley grows slowly wider, an international team of scientists is taking a unique opportunity to plot the progress of continents on the move.
The 28-strong team is led by University of Leeds geophysicist Dr Tim Wright, who has secured a £2.5 million grant from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to study the seismic events taking place in the remote Afar desert of Northern Ethiopia.
It's here that two mighty shelves of continental crust, the African and Arabian plates, meet -- and are tearing the landscape apart.
3D view of satellite radar measurements of how the ground moved in September 2005.