Abstract
It is evident that lunar mare basins have been subsiding and one reason for such subsidence was the existence of their mascons and their volcanic fills as loads that flexed the lithosphere. The additional effects of drying up and cooling of internal hot volumes may also have been important, leading to still more compressional mare environment. The remaining relicic thermal pulse-induced dilatation within large areas surrounding the mare basins may be responsible for the extensional rille tectonics together with the flexural peripheral bulge due to tensional arching and bending due to differences in internal volume changes.
The internal attack against the lunar crust has been quite different above and below the mean surface. Below this level the old crust was more easily attacked by volcanic extrusions, causing thick lava covers and, as a consequence, broken by compressional forces; while above this level the old crust has instead been temporarily and in places attacked by tensional forces in dimensions determined by the internal energy sources and their interaction with the lithospheric roof, thus enabling the internal forces together with flexural bending to dome and fault the upper crustal surface to some extent in respect to mare areas. The rille formation can be characterized by peripheral bulging and bending. The share of asthenosphere-related effects in lunar tectonics must be considered to have been very important. If only lava load and mascons have raised compression within mare areas and tension within the surrounding terra how can be explained those rille graben which do not have any extra mass concentrations nor lavas on their sides and why some major mascon basins have so few tensional rille graben structures around them?
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Beaumont, C.: 1981, ‘Foreland Basins’, J. Royal Astron. Soc. 65, 291–329.
Binder, A. B.: 1983, ‘A Critical Review of the Evidence Concerning the Depth of the Mare Basalt Magma Source Region’, Lunar Planet. Sci. 14, 39–40.
Binder, A. B. and Gunga, H. C.: 1985, ‘Young Thrust Fault Scarps in the Highlands: Evidence for an Initially Totally Molten Moon’, Icarus 63, 421–441.
Bratt, S. R., Solomon, S. C., and Head, J. W.: 1985, ‘The Evolution of Impact Basins: Cooling, Subsidence, and Thermal Stress’, J. Geophys. Res. 90, 12415–12433.
Golombek, M. P.: 1979, ‘Structural Analysis of Lunar Grabens and the Shallow Crustal Structure of the Moon’, J. Geophys. Res. 84, 4657–4666.
Guest, J. E. and Murray, J. B.: 1976, ‘Volcanic Features of the Nearside Equatorial Lunar Maria’, J. Geot. Soc. 132, 251–258.
Head, J. W. and Solomon, S. C.: 1980, ‘Lunar Basin Structure: Possible Influence of Variations in Lithosphere Thickness’, Lunar Planet. Sci. 11, 21–23.
Head, J. W., Solomon, S. C., and Whitford-Stark, J. L.: 1980, ‘Oceanus Procellarum Region: Evidence for an Anomalously Thin Early Lunar Lithosphere’, Lunar Planet. Sci. 11, 45–46.
Melosh, H. J.: 1978, ‘The Tectonics of Mascon Loading’, Proc. 9th Lunar Planet. Sci. Conf., pp. 3513–3525.
Morgan, W. J.: 1983, ‘Hotspot Tracks and the Early Rifting of the Atlantic’, Tectonophysics 94, 123–139.
Quinlan, G. M. and Beaumont, C.: 1984, ‘Appalachian Thrusting, Lithosphere Flexure, and the Paleozoic Stratigraphy of the Eartern Interior of North America’, Canad. J. Earth Sci. 21, 973–996.
Raitala, J.: 1977, ‘Tectonic Pattern of the Crüger/Rima Sirsalis-Rima De Gasparis Region of the Moon’, The Moon 17, 289–308.
Raitala, J.: 1978, ‘Structures and Activity of a Lunar Tectonic Zone’, Moon and Planets 19, 513–517.
Raitala, J.: 1981, ‘Tectonic Pattern of the Crater Grimaldi Region of the Moon’, Moon and Planets 24, 327–338.
Raitala, J.: 1982, ‘Tectonics of the Lunar Oceanus Procellarum Area’, Acta Univ. Ouluensis, Ser. A, No. 135, Oulu, Finland, 41 pp.
Raitala, J.: 1984, ‘Terra Scarps Indicating Youngest Terra Faults on the Moon’, Earth, Moon, and Planets 31, 63–74.
Ringwood, A. E.: 1979, The Origin of the Earth and Moon, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Solomon, S. C. and Head, J. W.: 1979a, ‘Characteristics and Evolution of the Lunar Lithosphere from the Deformation of Mascon Mare Basins’, Lunar Planet. Sci. 10, 1140–1142.
Solomon, S. C. and Head, J. W.: 1979b, ‘Vertical Movement in Mare Basins: Relation to Mare Emplacement, Basin Tectonics, and Lunar Thermal History’, J. Geophys. Res. 84, 1667–1682.
Sparks, R. S. J. and Huppert, H. E.: 1984, ‘Igneous Petrology: Old Magma Chambers Replenished by New Ideas, Nature 312, 200.
Taylor, S. R.: 1982, Planetary Science: A Lunar Perspective, Lunar Planetary Institute, Houston, Texas.
Walcott, R. I.: 1970, ‘Isostatic Response to Loading of the Crust in Canada’, Canad. J. Earth Sci. 7, 2–13.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
On leave form Dept. of Astronomy, Univ. of Oulu, Finland.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Raitala, J. Implications of lithospheric bending and faulting in lunar mare-terra tectonics. Earth Moon Planet 38, 137–147 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00119680
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00119680