Advances in African Earth Sciences

The African continent has remarkable geologic and tectonic features that make the continent not only full of natural resources but also susceptible to natural hazards. These features include the oldest cratons, plate subduction below the Eurasian plate at the North, the East African Rift System in the East, the African Superwell in the South, and the divergence with the American plates in the West. The longevity of the cratons and the dynamic history of these tectonic domains represent a crucial part of the Earth's history. Efforts to understand the current tectonic setup, the distribution of natural resources, and the associated natural hazards will provide a fundamental advance in the knowledge of our planet’s history and its similarity to other complementary domains. Therefore, the advances in African Earth Sciences are crucial to advancing the understanding of the Earth's history and improving future predictions. However, many regions in Africa still lack geoscientific observations that hinder the advancement of knowledge about geology, tectonics, and hazards in these regions and in Africa in general. This is also reflected in the sparsity of constraints contained in global Earth models which, as a consequence, hinder the building of a homogenized conceptual understanding of the Earth’s global tectonics.

In the last two decades, a significant effort has been made to understand the geology and tectonics in Africa and the associated resources and natural hazards by joint forces between African and international institutes. Currently, there is an exponential growth in Geo-observables over the African continent from both in-situ, airborne, and satellite observations. These observations are being rapidly utilized to push the African Earth Sciences forward.

In this Research Topic, we welcome interdisciplinary contributions from geological, geophysical, geochemical, geodynamics, and natural hazards-related studies on local, regional, and continental scales. This includes, but is not limited to, studies that bring new insights into unexplored regions or make innovative use of existing local or freely available global datasets and models to advance our knowledge about the geology, tectonics, Earth resources, and natural hazards of Africa. Research articles that utilize freely available datasets and algorithms that pave the way for the rising African graduate students and early careers researchers are strongly encouraged.

In Memory of Dr. Assia Harbi (Centre de Recherche en Astronomie Astrophysique et Géophysique (CRAAG), Algiers, Algeria) for her contributions to this Research Topic.