SRCC 214

Numerical modeling of the Daedalia Planum lava flows, Mars

Mars has been a target of scientific research for decades as its surface records a varied geologic history including the largest shield volcanoes in the solar system.  The evidence of volcanism from the shield volcanoes and the lava flows that extend for hundreds of kilometers garnered the interest of many scientists to determine why the volcanism on the planet is at a scale much larger than on Earth.  Many previous studies compared terrestrial and Martian flows using empirical relationships to determine values for parameters such as eruption rate and viscosity.  These terrestrial based empirical relationships have not been verified as being applicable to planetary flows.  This study aims to examine this issue by recreating Martian flows using numerical modeling with the FLOWGO model of Harris and Rowland (2001) and comparing the generated eruption rate and viscosity values.

Flow modeling for this study required the majority of parameters to be based on data taken from the terrestrial Piton de la Fournaise flow except for values directly measured from the study region such as flow dimensions and path slope.  Dimensions of flows were measured from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s Context Camera (CTX) images of the study region in Daedalia Planum, Mars. Slope and flow thickness required the use of elevation data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) instrument. Using these parameters, a set of three different models were produced that modeled the flows in the Daedalia Planum within 10% of their measured length.  The results of this study were comparable to previous work with eruption rates and viscosity values within the same range of previous studies.   In conclusion, this study has shown that Martian flows can be modeled using terrestrial parameter values with results comparable to previous solely empirical studies.