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Lunar Tectonism, History of

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Lunar Science

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Definition

The temporal sequence by which tectonic landforms on the Moon were formed and what the types and spatial distributions of those landforms tell us of their formation mechanisms, with implications for the thermal evolution of the body.

Introduction

The Moon shows no evidence for having experienced plate tectonics, such as divergent or convergent plate boundaries, volcanic arcs, subduction trenches, or extensive rift zones. Instead, the Moon experienced an early phase of differentiation during primordial cooling that segregated buoyant plagioclase from a global magma ocean and led to the development of a feldspathic crust (e.g., Wood et al. 1970; Green et al. 1971). This crust, likely mechanically uniform and less dense than the underlying mantle, rendered the Moon a one-plate or stagnant-lid planetary body (e.g., Solomon and Head 1979; Hiesinger and Head 2006). With a thick, rigid outer layer hundreds of kilometers thick (e.g., Nakamura et al. 1973; Wieczorek et al. 2006), no...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Planetary Research Group, Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Paul K. Byrne

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  1. Paul K. Byrne
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Correspondence to Paul K. Byrne .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Prairie View A&M University, Houston, Texas, USA

    Brian Cudnik

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Physics, Albion College, Albion, MI, USA

    Nicolle E. B. Zellner Ph.D

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Byrne, P.K. (2018). Lunar Tectonism, History of. In: Cudnik, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Lunar Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05546-6_85-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05546-6_85-1

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