Thrust Faulting as the Origin of Dorsa in the Trailing Hemisphere of Enceladus

Details Thrust Faulting as the Origin of Dorsa in the Trailing Hemisphere of Enceladus Thrust Faulting as the Origin of Dorsa in the Trailing Hemisphere of Enceladus

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.1602p&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #16.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.976

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Several large ridges, or "dorsa,” located within a tectonically deformed region of the trailing hemisphere of Enceladus, have remained poorly understood since they were imaged in Feb. 2005. In map view these 2.5 km wide ridges can bifurcate in a branching manner, and in profile they appear to be somewhat trapezoidal or "boxy” in shape. Geological mapping of the trailing hemisphere's Sarandib and Diyar Planitiae (Crow-Willard and Pappalardo, 2009) suggests the dorsa cut across and deform older striated terrain, which consists of small-scale (200 m wide) ridges and troughs. A single high-resolution (65 m/pixel) Cassini image captures the western portions of the Cufa Dorsa, where ridges of the striated terrain are visible on the southern flanks. This relationship is inconsistent with a previously suggested cryovolcanic origin, and there is no evidence of surrounding embayment. Instead, the relationships suggest tectonic uplift to form the dorsa. We propose that these ridges were formed by thrust faulting; in particular, the Cufa Dorsa suggest formation above south-dipping master thrusts, as either fault-bend folds or more likely as fault-propagation folds. The high-resolution image reveals small ( 300 m) irregular crenulations atop the ridges, and shadow roughness indicates significant roughness at sub-pixel scale. The crenulations appear analogous to those atop wrinkle ridges on the Moon and Mars, and to the Yakima Ridges of eastern Washington state, which form via high-level back thrusts in layered materials above a relatively flat décollement. The Cufa Dorsa terminate to the west against a prominent trough, which may have served as a transcurrent fault that permitted north-south contraction. Bifurcation of the Cufa Dorsa is consistent with three-dimensional straining, if the dorsa resulted from multi-directional contraction. Perhaps a thermal uplift that initialized trailing hemisphere tectonic deformation subsequently cooled and collapsed to form the dorsa.

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