Venusian highlands - Geoid to topography ratios and their implications

Geoid-to-topography ratios (GTRs) are estimated for 12 Venusian highland features to allow comparison with convection calculations and with terrestrial data of oceanic hot spots, swells, and plateaus. The geoid is estimated in the wavenumber domain from the isostatic formula, using the topography and the apparent depths isostatic compensation (ADC) for each region. In the space domain, the GTR is equal to the least squares slope of the linear fit of the geoid to the topograpy. The resulting GTR range is 7-31 m/km, which is much higher than terrestrial oceanic values (-1 to 5 m/km). The features fall into two distinct groups, one with a GTR range of 7-13 m/km, and one with a range of 19-25 m/km. A model for thermal thinning of a 100-km-thick lithosphere fits all values in the lower GTR group to within one standard deviation.