Several regions in East Africa have documented the presence of high velocity bodies along/within the East Africa rifts and also along the continental margins of East Africa. One hypothesis is that this underplate is related to the arrival of the plume head and partial melting within the upper lithosphere. Simple isostatic observations would indicate uplift associated with the mafic additions and a heatflow pulse that decays with time. When constraining the heatflow following the arrival of the magmatic underplate, is the thermal perturbation instantaneous or is it more erratic related to the movement of volatiles/ veins/ dykes? When would you expect the regional heatflow peak?
A significant uplift fraction of the rift shoulder may be due to the change in olivine molar volume induced by mantle heating. The heat source is provided by underplating. Heath diffusivity controls the lapse of time needed to reveal the effect.
Check this paper on the rifting of the Ross Sea: contains a detailed treatment of the problem :
" Cenozoic thermal evolution of lithospheric mantle in northern Victoria Land (Antarctica): Evidences from mantle xenoliths"
Pietro Armienti, Cristina Perinelli
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