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Mare (Moon)

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

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Definition

A large dark, smooth plain on the Moon formed when basaltic lava flowed into preexisting topographic depressions.

Category

A type of secondary crust on the Moon; large igneous province; volcanic plain, albedo feature

Synonyms

Volcanic plains (Moon)

Plural

Maria, lat

Note

Mare as a geological term describing volcanic plains is used exclusively for the Moon. For the structural depression a mare occupies see basin.

Description

Low-albedo regions on the Moon. Maria may be circular if the flows filled an impact basin without breaching it or irregular in shape if they filled an irregularly shaped depression or breached a basin (e.g., Oceanus Procellarum). On large scales, maria are mostly smooth but lie at different topographic levels, indicating that they are derived from independent eruptions (Smith et al. 1997). Though mare terrains comprise a substantial part of the lunar surface (~16 % to 17 %), most flows are less than 500 m thick, forming only a thin veneer totaling about...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geosciences, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID, USA

    Scott S. Hughes

  2. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Elizabeth A. Frank

  3. Planetary Science Research Group, Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    Henrik Hargitai

Authors
  1. Scott S. Hughes
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  2. Elizabeth A. Frank
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  3. Henrik Hargitai
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Correspondence to Scott S. Hughes .

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Hughes, S.S., Frank, E.A., Hargitai, H. (2014). Mare (Moon). In: Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_226-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_226-1

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