Observational constraints on the identification of shallow lunar magmatism: Insights from floor-fractured craters

Abstract

Floor-fractured craters are a class of lunar crater hypothesized to form in response to the emplacement of a shallow magmatic intrusion beneath the crater floor. The emplacement of a shallow magmatic body should result in a positive Bouguer anomaly relative to unaltered complex craters, a signal which is observed for the average Bouguer anomaly interior to the crater walls. We observe the Bouguer anomaly of floor-fractured craters on an individual basis using the unfiltered Bouguer gravity solution from GRAIL and also a degree 100–600 band-filtered Bouguer gravity solution. The low-magnitude of anomalies arising from shallow magmatic intrusions makes identification using unfiltered Bouguer gravity solutions inconclusive. The observed anomalies in the degree 100–600 Bouguer gravity solution are spatially heterogeneous, although there is spatial correlation between volcanic surface morphologies and positive Bouguer anomalies. We interpret these observations to mean that the spatial heterogeneity observed in the Bouguer signal is the result of variable degrees of magmatic degassing within the intrusions.