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[31.02] New insights into the evolutionary history of the major volcanic constructs from Mars Express HRSC data

S. C. Werner, G. Neukum (Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany), HRSC Co-Investigator Team

The High-Resolution Stereo Camera experiment on the ESA Mars Express mission has covered most of the major volcanic constructs during its first half year in orbit. The ability to image in colour and stereo simultaneously gives us new opportunity to better characterize most of the volcanoes in the Tharsis and Elysium region and some highland volcanoes geomorphologically and chrono-stratigraphically. We have remapped major parts of the volcanic shields and calderas on the basis of the high-resolution (as good as 10 m/pixel) HRSC imagery in colour and stereo and in combination with nested MOC imagery and the Super Resolution Channel (SRC) (as good as 2.5 m/pixel) of the HRSC. Crater size-frequency measurements confirm that the edifices have been constructed over billions of years and are characterized by episodically repeated phases of activity continuing almost to the present. The youngest ages determined by the crater size-frequency measurements are about 2 Ma suggesting that the volcanoes are potentially still active today. A number of caldera floor ages cluster around 150 Ma indicating a relatively recent peak activity period and practically coinciding in age with radiometrically measured crystallization ages of a group of basaltic meteorites from Mars (SNC meteorites).

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #4
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.