Topographical Analysis of Lonar Crater Using Cartosat-1 DEM

The Lonar crater in India provides an ample opportunity to in-depth analysis of crater morphology. This paper focuses on the topographical mapping of Lonar crater with detailed study on slope, regional analysis and its rim signature. The slope of the crater (inner wall region) reveals that the northern part is steep and southern part is gentle, while, on the outer region, the northern part is flat and the later shows abrupt variations. On regional topographical mapping (~4 crater radii) around the Lonar crater, it was observed that the terrain descends from NE to SW. An elevation difference of ~20 m was observed between the N and S part, infers that the pre-impact terrain is a descending one. The crater northern rim was elevated ~10 m to ~15 m, whereas southern rim was elevated ~50 m above the average regional surface. We found that the topographically lower southern region was abruptly changed and the rim has been uplifted to an elevation of ~604 m above the average regional elevation (~555 m). This result infers that the post-impact topography was abruptly altered along the S side. The crater rim signature extracted from highest point all along the rim shows a near flat surface on north, whereas the V-shaped protrusion shows active erosion and degradation on the west. Thus, DEM based topographic study has opened a new insight about the Lonar crater, from differential rim uplift, alteration along the rim and finally revealed that the impact crater formed on a descending terrain.