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Lineament Grid

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms

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Definition

Global pattern of preferentially oriented lineaments on the surface of a planetary body. Lineaments whose orientation is influenced locally by another surface feature (e.g., an impact basin) or was created by exogenic processes are not considered to be parts of the lineament grid.

Synonyms

Global grid system; Global lineament pattern

Regional Terms

Lunar grid (Moon), lineament grid (Mercury) (Dzurisin 1978), Mercurian grid (Thomas et al. 1988).

Description

Linear, arcuate, sinuous, or irregular scarps (steep, cliff-like slopes of considerable lateral extent separating terrains lying at different levels), ridges (elongated positive relief features), or troughs (elongated negative relief features).

Formation

A global (or regional) lineament grid pattern can be the result of global (or regional) strain in the crust. Global strain can arise from the following events:

  1. (1)

    Change in rotation rate (Vening Meinesz 1947), for example, despinning caused by tidal dissipation (tidal...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

    Erzsébet Illés-Almár

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  1. Erzsébet Illés-Almár
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Correspondence to Erzsébet Illés-Almár .

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Illés-Almár, E. (2014). Lineament Grid. In: Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_482-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_482-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-9213-9

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