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Terraced Crater Wall (Mass Wasting)

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Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms

Definition

Steplike, arcuate concentric slump features found along the inner crater wall. These features are generally more or less continuous around the crater and can consist of multiple steps (Pike 1988).

Synonyms

Slump blocks; Slumped crater wall; Wall failure

Description

Complex crater walls are commonly broken up into a series of terraces: relatively flat ledges, offset by scarps facing the center of a crater, which step down from the crater rim to the floor (Settle and Head 1979). On the Moon, the smallest craters where terracing is observed are flat-floored craters larger than ~15 km, transitional in size and morphology between simple and complex craters (flat floored crater, transitional). In general, terrace width increases from the crater floor outward, with the largest, most defined terrace just under the crater rim. Hence, the highest terraces on a crater wall correspond to the scalloped, cuspate segments of the rim (Pike 1988). The largest terrace width increases with...

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Correspondence to Gareth S. Collins .

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Collins, G.S. (2014). Terraced Crater Wall (Mass Wasting). In: Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_361-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_361-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-9213-9

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