The linked reference provides new insights into both magnetic anomalies and tectonic activity in Antarctica, including for the important West Antarctic Rift System (WARS):
A. V. Golynsky et al. (08 June 2018), "New Magnetic Anomaly Map of the Antarctic", Geophysical Research Letters,
https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078153https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GL078153AbstractThe second generation Antarctic magnetic anomaly compilation for the region south of 60°S includes some 3.5 million line‐km of aeromagnetic and marine magnetic data that more than doubles the initial map's near‐surface database. For the new compilation, the magnetic data sets were corrected for the International Geomagnetic Reference Field, diurnal effects, and high‐frequency errors and leveled, gridded, and stitched together. The new magnetic data further constrain the crustal architecture and geological evolution of the Antarctic Peninsula and the West Antarctic Rift System in West Antarctica, as well as Dronning Maud Land, the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, the Prince Charles Mountains, Princess Elizabeth Land, and Wilkes Land in East Antarctica and the circumjacent oceanic margins. Overall, the magnetic anomaly compilation helps unify disparate regional geologic and geophysical studies by providing new constraints on major tectonic and magmatic processes that affected the Antarctic from Precambrian to Cenozoic times.
Plain Language SummaryGiven the ubiquitous polar cover of snow, ice, and seawater, the magnetic anomaly compilation offers important constraints on the global tectonic processes and crustal properties of the Antarctic. It also links widely separated areas of outcrop to help unify disparate geologic studies and provides insights on the lithospheric transition between Antarctica and adjacent oceans, as well as the geodynamic evolution of the Antarctic lithosphere in the assembly and breakup of the Gondwana, Rodinia, and Columbia supercontinents and key piercing points for reconstructing linkages between the protocontinents. The magnetic data together with ice‐probing radar and gravity information greatly facilitate understanding the evolution of fundamental large‐scale geological processes such as continental rifting, intraplate mountain building, subduction and terrane accretion processes, and intraplate basin formation.
Extract: "These new data provide key constraints into the extent of Cenozoic magmatism in the West Antarctic Rift System (WARS), which extends from the Ross Sea Embayment to the Amundsen (Gohl et al., 2013; Jordan et al., 2010) and possibly Bellingshausen Seas (Eagles et al., 2009). As in the Ross Sea sector (Behrendt, 1999), the Amundsen Sea Embayment was initially affected by distributed Cretaceous rifting related to New Zealand‐West Antarctica separation (Gohl et al., 2013) and subsequent Cenozoic narrow‐mode rifting (Jordan et al., 2010). The new aeromagnetic compilation reveals the occurrence of several narrow highly magmatic rift basins between the outcrops of Neogene volcanics in the Hudson Mountains (Figure 2), the Pine Island Glacier (Figure 2) catchment, and the Marie Byrd Land Dome (Young et al., 2017). Some of the proposed subglacial rift basins may also enhance glacial flow into the Amundsen Sea (Smith et al., 2013) and Bellingshausen Sea embayments (Bingham et al., 2012). Recent Curie depth estimates derived from magnetic data (Gohl et al., 2013) provide evidence for high geothermal heat flux offshore of the Thwaites Glacier (Figure 2; Dziadek et al., 2017) consistent with proposed Cenozoic tectono‐thermal reactivation in this WARS segment (Damiani et al., 2014). ADMAP‐2 facilitates extending these results inland into the catchment area of the climatically sensitive glacier and its neighbors."
