Geomagnetic and morphological signature of small crateriform structures in the Alpine Foreland, Southeast Germany

Lots of rimmed crateriform structures with diameters of the order of meters and ten meters in young fluvial and moraine sediments in Southeast Germany have raised increased interest in the last decade although they have been known since longtime. An anthropogenic origin (for smelting or lime kiln purposes, as prospecting pits, bomb craters, etc) can in most cases be excluded, and the ring walls are speaking against a formation as simple sink holes. Some earlier geomagnetic field and soil susceptibility measurements found anomalies without giving them further enhanced consideration. In a new geomagnetic campaign we exemplarily investigated a few of these craters by fluxgate gradiometer surveys and by magnetic susceptibility measurements of the crater soil and of rock samples digged from the crater underground that also supplied remnant magnetization data. Conspicuously, the craters although morphologically similar, can be subdivided into structures with a clear magnetic signature and ones free of mentionable anomalies. The magnetic signature is expressed by soil susceptibilities up to one order of magnititude higher for the depression and rim area compared to outside the structure, and by an irregular cluster of short-wavelength magnetic anomalies in extreme cases exceding several 1000 nT/m amplitude. Excavations do not show any anthropogenic influence but highly magnetized, frequently strongly fractured cobbles and boulders as the cause. Susceptibilities up to more than 6000 x 10-5 SI and remnant magnetizations of the order of 10 A/m (Koenigsberger ratio Q up to 3.5) were measured. So far enigmatic are very high susceptibilities and remnant magnetizations of limestone clasts. While in general carbonate clasts of the region have susceptibilities of the order of 0.00005 x 10-5 SI and negligible remanence, we measured up to more than 1500 x 10-5 SI and remnant magnetizations of up to 2 A/m (Q up to 3) for limestone samples from the craters. Detailed rock-magnetic studies are ongoing, and, for the moment, we point to new ideas focusing on a formation of at least part of the craters as meteorite craters originating from the recently proposed large Holocene so-called Chiemgau impact event. The magnetic signature as described may prove as a characteristic attribute of identifying respective craters, and thermal effects implying a thermal remnant magnetization are discussed. On the other hand, the highly magnetized carbonate rocks do not show any significant thermal overprint, and a strong shock magnetization debated for some magnetic anomalies in impact craters must seriously be considered. The "magnetic" craters irrespective of their diameters show when appropriately scaled more or less identical diametral cross sections while the craters without magnetic signature have a different profile. Hence, two different processes are suggested to have produced "magnetic" meteorite craters and a second group of craters that may have an endogenetic origin possibly by soil liquefaction sand explosions in the course of the postulated impact event.