PERMANENT UPLIFT IN MAGMATIC SYSTEMS WITH APPLICATION TO THE THARSIS REGION OF MARS

There has been considerable debate as to the importance of permanent structural uplift in attaining the topographic relief of the Tharsis rise on Mars. The presence of ancient terrain high on the rise suggests uplift took place, and this idea is supported by the presence of graben and fractures in the Claritas Fossae region that are orthogonal to extensional stress directions predicted by flexural uplift models of Tharsis. We derive expressions for total elevation and crustal displacement resulting from the partial melting associated with an upper mantle magmatic system. The effect of lateral mass loss is included in the derivation, as is the difference between mass balance and isostatic balance. -from Authors