Morphostructural mapping of Borealis Planitia, Mercury

Marco Cardinale, David A. Vaz, Piero D’Incecco, Nicola Mari, Justin Filiberto, Gabriel L. Eggers and Gaetano Di Achille

Journal of Maps, 2023, vol. 19, issue 1, 2223637

Abstract: Orbital data from the MESSENGER spacecraft show that a significant portion of Mercury’s northern hemisphere is covered by smooth plains, which are interpreted to be flood volcanic material and/or impact melt. The smooth plains show pervasive tectonic structures and encompass a broad raised bulge of uncertain geophysical interpretation. In this work, we focus on the mapping of all the morphostructures within the northern smooth plains, aiming at providing a useful dataset for further studies about the mapped area. The structural map is obtained through a twofold process: first with an automatic mapping, using an algorithm to identify all the lineaments from a DEM; and second with a visual inspection and classification of the results of the algorithm in a GIS environment. The final maps are drafted at two different scales, 1:300,000 and 1:600,000. With this approach, we mapped and characterized more than fifty thousand lines marking scarps on the surface, creating a database with several morphometric attributes for each of the identified scarps (e.g. length, azimuth, and height), which can be used for geostatistical study of smooth plains tectonics. Our structural map reveals that: (i) the area is broadly dominated by wrinkle ridges, ghost crater assemblages of lineaments, and scarps related to impact crater processes (e.g. radial faults, secondary crater chains, ejecta emplacement) and that (ii) the amount of strain was not evenly accommodated throughout the northern smooth plains.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17445647.2023.2223637 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tjomxx:v:19:y:2023:i:1:p:2223637

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tjom20

DOI: 10.1080/17445647.2023.2223637

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Maps is currently edited by Dr Mike Smith, Dr Jeremy Porter and Dr Dick Berg

More articles in Journal of Maps from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().