Geophysical evidence supports migration of Tharsis volcanism on Mars

Abstract

Tharsis swell represents the largest area of volcanism on Mars and sits adjacent to the dichotomy between the northern lowlands and southern highlands. While a number of investigators have proposed that Tharsis volcanism and topographic swell was caused by a stationary mantle plume, both numerical and tank experiments find that a plume will rise beneath a region of thick lithosphere, hence somewhere beneath the southern highlands on Mars. We present models of crustal thickness which show a region of thickened crust associated with previously mapped geologic units that have been suggested to represent the path of the Tharsis plume. We find a similarity in topography and structure between the proposed Tharsis plume track on Mars and the Snake River plain/Yellowstone hot spot track in western North America.