P31A-2049
RIS4E at Kilauea’s December 1974 (D1974) Flow: Establishing the D1974 Flow as an Ideal Mars Analog

Wednesday, 16 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Kelsey E Young1, Jacob E Bleacher2, Deanne Rogers3, Amy McAdam4, William Brent Garry4, Stephen P Scheidt5, Lynn M Carter4 and Timothy D Glotch3, (1)University of Maryland College Park, College Park, MD, United States, (2)NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (3)Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, United States, (4)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (5)University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States
Abstract:
The Kīlauea December 1974 (D1974) flow was emplaced from a series of en echelon fissures southwest of Kīlauea Caldera. In 6.5 hours the D1974 flow was emplaced over the Keanakāko`i ash member as a rapidly emplaced sheet flow. This flow has previously been used as a location for radar roughness studies due to the exposure of abrupt changes in surface texture ranging between smooth pāhoehoe, rubbly and slabby lavas and ʻaʻā lava. When viewed in visible remote sensing images, this flow field displays dark and light toned areas that reveal sinuous patterns, streamlined islands, and rafted lava slabs and plates. The flow is an ideal location to study lava textures, textural relationships and the formation of non-traditional channels and associated features as analogs to characterizing the formation of channel networks on the flanks of martian volcanoes or rilles in the lunar mare.

The D1974 flow is also positioned downwind from Kīlauea Caldera along the volcano’s SW rift zone. D1974 lavas flowed across older, active fumaroles and have since been exposed to acid fog, rain, and other plume related processes. In 2008 the Kīlauea Caldera experienced an explosive event along the wall of Halemaʻumaʻu and has since displayed an active lava lake, thereby elevating the flow’s exposure to processes related to volcanic gasses. Alteration products have therefore formed both in and around the older fumaroles (at the solfatara site) as well as being deposited as thin coatings over the entire length of the flow. These products are reminiscent of sulfate-rich materials that have been identified on Mars by several groups. Though these martian deposits have been identified and analyzed, their formation mechanism remains somewhat ambiguous. The D1974 flow represents an ideal analog with which to test various formation scenarios using a variety of field portable technologies, designed to analyze the alteration products in situ (thereby preserving their initial structures and textures).

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