The effect of the oceans on the terrestrial crater size-frequency distribution: Insight from numerical modeling
Citation
Davison, T., & Collins, G. S. (2007). The effect of the oceans on the terrestrial crater size‐frequency distribution: Insight from numerical modeling. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 42(11), 1915-1927.Publisher
The Meteoritical SocietyJournal
Meteoritics & Planetary ScienceDescription
From the proceedings of the Workshop on Impact Craters as Indicators for Planetary Environmental Evolution and Astrobiology held in June 2006 in Östersund, Sweden.Additional Links
https://meteoritical.org/Abstract
On Earth, oceanic impacts are twice as likely to occur as continental impacts, yet the effect of the oceans has not been previously considered when estimating the terrestrial crater size-frequency distribution. Despite recent progress in understanding the qualitative and quantitative effect of a water layer on the impact process through novel laboratory experiments, detailed numerical modeling, and interpretation of geological and geophysical data, no definitive relationship between impactor properties, water depth, and final crater diameter exists. In this paper, we determine the relationship between final (and transient) crater diameter and the ratio of water depth to impactor diameter using the results of numerical impact models. This relationship applies for normal incidence impacts of stoney asteroids into water-covered, crystalline oceanic crust at a velocity of 15 km s-1. We use these relationships to construct the first estimates of terrestrial crater size-frequency distributions (over the last 100 million years) that take into account the depth-area distribution of oceans on Earth. We find that the oceans reduce the number of craters smaller than 1 km in diameter by about two-thirds, the number of craters ~30 km in diameter by about one-third, and that for craters larger than ~100 km in diameter, the oceans have little effect. Above a diameter of ~12 km, more craters occur on the ocean floor than on land; below this diameter more craters form on land than in the oceans. We also estimate that there have been in the region of 150 impact events in the last 100 million years that formed an impact-related resurge feature, or disturbance on the seafloor, instead of a crater.Type
Proceedingstext
Language
enISSN
1945-5100ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1111/j.1945-5100.2007.tb00550.x