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Migration of Tharsis volcanism on Mars caused by differential rotation of the lithosphere

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Abstract

The two most striking surface features on Mars are the Tharsis Rise and the crustal dichotomy1,2. The crustal dichotomy, an elevation difference of ∼5 km between the southern highlands and the northern lowlands, is the oldest geological feature on Mars, and the Tharsis Rise is a vast volcanic construct in the equatorial region of the planet, near the dichotomy boundary. Tharsis volcanism was initiated in the southern highlands and the main volcanic centre subsequently migrated to its current location3,4,5, suggesting relative motion between the lithosphere and the underlying mantle. However, as a one-plate planet, Mars cannot have large-scale motion of the lithosphere according to the standard theory of stagnant-lid convection6,7. Here I use three-dimensional spherical shell models of mantle convection to demonstrate that a unique mode of horizontal motion of the lithosphere, differential rotation, is readily excited for Mars by one-plume convection and lithospheric thickness variations. The suggested mechanism explains the temporal and spatial patterns of Tharsis volcanism and offers a path to a unified model for Tharsis rise and the crustal dichotomy, with implications for volcanism, tectonics and true polar wander on other one-plate planetary bodies.

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Figure 1: Map of surface topography on Mars.
Figure 2: Three-dimensional thermal structure from numerical models.
Figure 3: Modelling results for spectra and flow velocity.
Figure 4: Heat flux and a unified model.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank F. Nimmo for discussions on TPW and S. King for reviewing the manuscript. This work is supported by the NASA MFR programme and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. CIG distributes the software CitcomS that is used in this study.

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  1. Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA

    Shijie Zhong

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Correspondence to Shijie Zhong.

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Supplementary Information, Table S1

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Zhong, S. Migration of Tharsis volcanism on Mars caused by differential rotation of the lithosphere. Nature Geosci 2, 19–23 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo392

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