Monica Hersher

with Chris Bickel

Ashland, Virginia, United States

Purpose
This graphic was designed to accompany a Science News feature profiling the discoveries of a geologist who is breaking new ground on this topic. The map blends elevation and remote sensing data to render the continents striking topography and contrast the volcano-studded deep valleys of eastern Africa with the newly discovered, early-stage faults extending south and west. The project involved digitizing and geocoding new research on active faults and generalizing the data to visualize the lines of current and projected rifting shown on the map. Advanced methods were used to replicate the colors and textures of the land in the cubes. The lake-filled valleys of the second cube echo the stage of rifting that can be seen in the topography of eastern Africa, while the first cube details the juvenile faults that have been discovered in the south and west. The third cube forecasts the complete fracturing of the continent that is to come.

Equipment
(Map) Blender, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, GDAL, Bash, QGIS (Cubes) Cinema 4D, Procreate, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop