Mud volcanoes discovered near the Crommelin South Crater, Mars

Details Mud volcanoes discovered near the Crommelin South Crater, Mars Mud volcanoes discovered near the Crommelin South Crater, Mars

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmep21a0728p&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #EP21A-0728

Physics

[0714] Cryosphere / Clathrate, [5464] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Remote Sensing, [5470] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Surface Materials And Properties, [6225] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Mars

Scientific paper

We report the first detection of mud volcanoes in the equatorial highlands of Mars, in the Arabia Terra region within an unnamed crater located immediately south of the Crommelin crater, herein referred to as ‘Crommelin South’ crater. Mud volcanoes are recognized on the crater floor as hundreds of isolated or coalescing sub-conical mounds, with heights estimated at up to several tens of metres. The mounds include simple forms with sub-elliptical plan-forms typically 100-300 m in diameter, in places coalescing to form composite mounds up to 500 m in diameter. More than 50% of the mounds show subcircular depressions at the apex indicating locations of vents. The mounds are all associated with a distinctive sediment facies that includes clasts up to boulder size, which we interpret as the first deposits of mud volcanic breccia to be recognized on Mars. The larger clasts are sub-angular to angular and include bright features that appear to be derived from bright layers within the surrounding Layered Deposits. The mudbreccia facies is observed to stratigraphically overlie the Layered Deposits and, which infill this part of the crater in thicknesses estimated at up to 300 m. The distribution of the mud volcanoes is closely related to impact-related faults and fractures, which represent probable pathways for subsurface fluid migration. The Crommelin South mud volcanoes are comparable in form and deposits texture to terrestrial mud volcanoes, which are typically composed of matrix-supported mud breccias (including clasts up to metric or decametric size) derived from multiple stratigraphic levels as a response to the upward migration of overpressured fluids from depths of kilometers. The presence of bright clasts in the Crommelin South mud breccias is consistent with their extrusion in response to the upward migration of fluids through the relatively thin crater-fill from overpressured sources in underlying crustal materials, probably along long-lived pathways provided by impact-related structures. A plausible source of such crustal fluids is aquifers that have been hypothesized to lie at the base of the Martian cryosphere or the deeper hydrate stability zone, both of which reach their global minimum thickness at equatorial latitudes. We argue that the Crommelin South mud volcanoes provide evidence of an episode of fluid and gas release from sub-cryosphere aquifers, following deposition of the Layered Deposits, likely in response to methane hydrate destabilization driven either by external changes in the Martian climate or by the internal dynamics of thermally-insulating hydrate occurrences.

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