The Baikal Rift Zone

     Its pretty chilly here at Lake Baikal in southern Russia (53°30′N 108°0′E) the one of the world's deepest and most ancient lakes. I'm sitting in temporary tent, bundled up to keep out the chill. Outside there is beautiful lake with endless mountains at its banks.  My parents must be pretty cold outside. They're doing research on the Baikal Rift Zone, a divergent boundary beneath the the lake. The lake is actually formed in the rift valley of the boundary, which is a linear indent made by the stretching of the crust as the plates diverge. It is likely that the mountains were formed as a result of the tension. As the rift sunk down the rock on either side moved up, or so is common with divergent boundaries.
     At this boundary, Eurasian and Amur Plates are being forced apart. Often, at a divergent boundary, less dense, hotter magma forces its way through the crust, but in this case the driving force is not definite. As I said for a typical divergent boundary, magma rises up, breaking through the crust, and then it hardens repeating this process to make new crust and continue moving outward. In this case though scientists are not sure of the cause. They think its likely that the movement of other plates is driving this movement as well as some local, circulating magma beneath the surface. Though there are no volcanoes here, as the magma has not actually reached the surface, which I was rather disappointed about, there are hot springs as the magma is very close to the surface.  There has also been some recent volcanic activity nearby likely to have been caused by the divergent boundary, which is another reason why mom and dad are here, to study recent volcanic and seismic activity. As I said there hot springs, and there are also some decently sized earthquakes every couple of years. These earthquakes are the result of the magma and moving plates. Similar seismic activity has happened in the past, which has shaped the land to how it is now, and the earth continues to change. The plates move apart from each other at 4 mm a year, and earthquakes and movements driven by tectonics will continue to move the earth until this lake becomes an ocean.
Here's a pic of the lake:


   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/features/9668060/lake-baikal-siberia-russia.html