Geological Processes

Impact Processes (summary)

• meteorite impact- major transport process
• Impact is also a major erosional process.
• Impact causes metamorphic process on the Moon - characteristic
shock deformation, heating, melting, vaporization, and even
ionization of pre-existing minerals and rocks.
• Impact processes alter the textures of rocks and generate new ones,
such as glasses, impact melts, and fragmental rocks (breccias)
containing either a single rock type (monomict) or multiple rock types
(polymict).
Impact Processes (summary)
• The ejection of material from impact structures, and the subsurface
effects beneath them, combine to produce a lunar crust and surface
composed of lithologically diverse impact deposits.
• It is typical for lunar impact breccia samples to contain fragments of
impact melts and older breccias from a number of craters.
• Textural, mineralogical, chemical, and chronological evidence for
these “breccia within breccia” relationships is common.
Lunar rock erosion
• Two principal mechanisms.
• Very small impacts have an “abrasive” effect, similar to energetic
sandblasting, and each impact removes a relatively small amount of
rock.
• In contrast, more energetic events, involving larger projectiles up to
centimeters in size, will completely shatter an entire rock by
“collisional fragmentation” (Gault and Wedekind, 1969; Matsui et al.,
1982).
Lunar rock erosion
• “Abrasive” impacts may be thought of as impacts into infinite half-
space targets, with a large mass ratio of target rock/projectile.
• With larger projectiles, and smaller rock/projectile ratios, the target
rock acts as a finite-sized object and shatters if the impact energy
exceeds a definite value.
Lunar rock erosion
• Larger, more massive rocks have higher erosion rates, because
increasingly larger impacts begin to contribute to the abrasive
process.
• Absolute abrasion rates, therefore, increase with increasing mass of
the target rock.
• collisional fragmentation destroys rocks faster and more effectively
than abrasion.
The “gardening” of the regolith.

• Repetitive and frequent impacts agitate the lunar surface by

shattering, burying, exhuming, tumbling, and transporting individual
grains in a random fashion.
• These processes gradually develop a fine-grained powdery layer on
the lunar surface above the actual bedrock. This layer, called the
regolith, is then continuously “gardened” and churned (Morris,
1978a).
The regolith
• In 10^6 years, the regolith is
gardened (overturned) once to a
depth of almost 1 cm at the 50%
probability level, but during the
same period the uppermost
millimeter is turned over a few
tens of times and the outermost
0.1 mm a few hundred times
The regolith
• In developing the regolith, a major
role is played by the rare larger
impacts. The graph emphasizes the
role of larger craters and illustrates
how a typical layered regolith column
may be produced.
• Over time, constructive and
destructive impact events are
continually competing; in this
hypothetical regolith, a particularly
destructive event occurred at 240
m.y., destroying all previous
sedimentary history.
Large-scale regolith evolution.
These figures also compare the effects of time constant vs.
exponentially decaying meteorite fluxes for the Apollo 11 and
12 sites. The important point is that, for either type of flux, the
overall growth rates of the regolith decrease with time. This is
caused by the gradual development of the regolith itself, which
acts to shield the bedrock. As time goes on, and the regolith
thickens, increasing numbers of “small” craters develop entirely
in the regolith layer and fail to penetrate bedrock. It takes
increasingly larger craters, which are relatively rare, to deepen
the regolith by penetrating the entire layer and excavating new
bedrock. Therefore, today’s regolith growth rates are
significantly lower than those in early lunar history, when the
regoliths were thinner and the overall impact flux was higher.
Regolith
• Seismic measurements can, in principle, distinguish between solid
and fragmented rock, but many fragmented and displaced masses
may have been recompacted and densified by subsequent impacts.
• These compaction and recrystallization effects can blur the ideally
sharp contact between impact-transported melt or breccia and
underlying fractured bedrock.
• The limited seismic profiling of the lunar crust reveals a gradual
velocity increase with depth, which may be consistent with the
presence of disturbed rock masses as deep as a few tens of kilometers
Basaltic Volcanism
Basaltic Volcanism
• Subduction does not occur on the Moon,

• The duration of lunar volcanic activity is related to the thermal state

of the mantle and thus to the thermal evolution of the Moon.

• Current data indicate that major lunar volcanic activity ceased at

approximately 3 b.y. ago, implying that mantle temperatures had then
dropped below those necessary to sustain partial melting.
Basaltic Volcanism
• the lunar basalts are chemically complementary to the residual
unmelted mantle materials left behind.
• Nearly all of the basalts occur on the nearside.
• “Fire fountaining,” driven by gases exsolving from the magma, occurs
during basaltic lava eruptions, dispersing the melt as fine droplets.
• Pyroclastic deposits on the Moon are widely dispersed and are readily
worked into the regolith by impact gardening
Volcanic landforms
• Mare lava flows: The dark-colored flat mare plains were formed by
large-volume eruptions of low-viscosity basaltic lavas.
• Galileo had likened these smooth surfaces to water, i.e., “oceans,”
thus the Latin term “mare.” In current usage, mare basin designates a
circular, multiring impact structure and maria the dark-colored lavas
within such basins.
• Many lunar lava flows lack distinct scarps, an observation that could
reflect several possible causes— even lower viscosities, higher
eruption rates, pooling of flows in shallow depressions, or subsequent
destruction by impact cratering.
Volcanic landforms
• Sinuous rilles. Meandering channels, called sinuous rilles, commonly
begin at crater or crater-like landforms and end by fading downslope
into the smooth mare surface or into a chain of elongate pits (Greeley,
1971; Figs. 4.27a,b).
Volcanic landforms
• Mare domes. Domes are broad, convex, circular to oval landforms of
modest positive relief on the lunar maria (Smith, 1973; Head and
Gifford, 1980).
Volcanic landforms
• Lava terraces. Small terraces within some craters and along mare-
highland boundaries have been interpreted as “shorelines” left after
withdrawal of erupted lava, either by drainage back into vents or by
flow into a lower basin
Volcanic landforms
• Cinder Cones. conelike landforms have been described on the maria
in association with rilles. They are generally of very low albedo. Most
cones are less than 100 m high, with diameters of approximately 2–3
km at the base (Guest and Murray, 1976; Head and Wilson, 1979).
Volcanic landforms
• Dark-haloed craters and pyroclastic deposits. relatively modest,
broad, pancake-shaped volcanic landforms, primarily because of the
low gravity that allows wider areal dispersion of the spatter and
bombs.
Filling of the Maria
• Deep melting can be produced by several mechanisms associated with the formation of
large impact basins.
• (i) The lower thermal conductivity of thick basin filling ejecta blankets, which is related to
their high porosity, can produce significant upwarping of mantle isotherms, thus
promoting localized melting below a basin (Arkani-Hamed et al., 1973).
• Other factors include the (ii) actual physical uplift of mantle materials during basin
formation,
• (iii)the decrease in hydrostatic pressure caused by the sudden removal of overburden, and
the resulting decrease in melting temperature with decreasing confining pressure (Brett,
1976).
• In addition, (iv)massive, unfractured sheets of fresh impact melt produced during basin
formation, possibly a few kilometers deep, may act as an impermeable plug that forces
the ascending lavas from the center of the basin to its edges.
Volume estimate
• Subtraction of the present height from the estimated initial rim height
(above the initial lunar surface) yields the cumulative thickness of
basaltic fill. This approach was applied to all observable flooded
craters, generally only 20–40 craters per mare-filled basin; from these
data isopach maps of the thickness of basalt filling were constructed.
• These maps indicate basalt thicknesses of 0.5–1 km in the shelf areas,
increasing to a few kilometers in the basin interiors.
Volume estimate
• the total volume of basaltic magma generated within the Moon is not
precisely known, but current estimates yield values of between 10^6
and 10^7 km^3. Even the maximum estimates are <1% of the volume
of lunar mantle.
• It is therefore safe to infer that high degrees of partial melting,
involving large regions of the entire mantle, did not take place within
the Moon.
Tectonic activity
• internal tectonic activity on the Moon is a minor process.
• the crust of the Moon appears to be thick, rigid, immobile, and cool in
comparison to the crust of the Earth, which is characterized, even
today, by large-scale motions and by a high degree of partial melting.
• External forces: Impact and Tidal forces
• Internal forces: thermal stress and volcanic intrusion
External stress
• impact events create a large number of tectonic features associated
with complex craters and large impact basins. These features include
wall terraces, multi-ring mountain scarps, and radial fracture (fault)
systems.
• Another form of tectonic activity is associated with large-scale impact
basins that are subsequently filled with basalts
• Tidal Stress: Simultaneous occurrence of deformation due to tides
and impact cratering has obliterated many of the evidence of
deformation caused due to tidal stresses.
External stress
• Despite the obliterating effects of the intense bombardment,
evidence of early, global tectonic deformation may still be preserved.
A number of investigators (Habakov, 1949; Strom, 1964; Allen, 1975;
Fagin et al., 1978; Hale, 1980) have suggested that a systematic,
global pattern of lineaments (grabens, horsts, linear scarps, linear
crater wall segments, etc.) exists; this pattern has been called the
“lunar grid” system
Internal Stress
• Thermal Stress: Models of lunar thermal history indicate that thermal
expansion during the first billion years of the Moon’s existence would have
produced tensional stresses in the lunar crust and that contraction during the
subsequent 3.5 b.y. until now have produced compression

• Volcanic intrusions. While most mare ridges are believed to have been
caused by thermally-generated compressive stresses, some ridges may have
been produced by intrusion of magma just below the surface (Strom, 1964).
One model for the development of craters with fractured floors calls for
intrusion of magma beneath the crater floors, resulting in uplift (Schultz,
1976b). Humboldt Crater may be one example of such uplift and associated
fracturing