News Release

New GSA special paper takes us to the moon

Book Announcement

Geological Society of America

SPE477.jpg

image: New GSA Special Paper, "Recent Advances and Current Research Issues in Lunar Stratigraphy," brings together 17 authors sharing their latest knowledge to aid in understanding of the stratigraphic features and characteristics of Earth's Moon. view more 

Credit: The Geological Society of America

Boulder, CO, USA - Lunar missions over the past 15 years have brought to Earth data that is greatly improving geoscientists' understanding of the stratigraphic features and characteristics of Earth's Moon. Missions targeting basins, highlands, mare deposits, and the lunar poles provide information to aid planetary geologists in piecing together, through maps and models, the nature of our closest neighbor.

Lunar stratigraphic relationships and issues relating to their resolution occur at a wide variety of scales -- from the very largest (impact basins) to smaller scales (large impact craters, discrete highlands, and volcanic terrains), where detailed mapping of structural, volcanic, and impact-related features has increased understanding of three-dimensional lunar stratigraphic relationships in areas where the chronological history has been unknown or incomplete.

Editors William A. Ambrose of The University of Texas at Austin's Jackson School of Geoscience and David A. Williams of the University of Arizona's School of Earth and Space Exploration have brought together 17 authors sharing the latest knowledge to help provide a complete picture as possible of the current status of the science.

Their investigations address several major questions regarding the Moon's origin and basin history, including (1) the lunar cataclysm hypothesis; (2) the timing and relative age of major basins such as South Pole-Aitken; (3) stratigraphic relationships of basins and mare-fill units within the South Pole-Aitken basin; (4) recognition of cryptic basins from recent topographic data, leading to a more comprehensive lunar stratigraphic sequence; (5) internal mare stratigraphy and history of emplacement of volcanic strata in major basins; and (6) understanding the formation of lunar sinuous rilles through analysis of their final morphology, providing insight into lunar volcanic processes and local stratigraphy.

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Individual copies of the volume may be purchased through the Geological Society of America online bookstore, http://rock.geosociety.org/Bookstore/default.asp?oID=0&catID=9&pID=SPE477, or by contacting GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org.

Book editors of earth science journals/publications may request a review copy by contacting Jeanette Hammann, jhammann@geosociety.org.

Recent Advances and Current Research Issues in Lunar Stratigraphy
William A. Ambrose and David A. Williams (editors)
Geological Society of America Special Paper 477
SPE477, 159 p., $50.00; Member price $40.00
ISBN 978-0-8137-2477-5

www.geosociety.org


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