Today's Image of Mars shows a chain of pits along the northwestern flank of the volcano, Alba Patera. Those pits form a fracture at the volcano's southern most point. The fracture is part of a larger fracture system that is radial to the volcano and suggests that it is somehow related to the volcano's formation.
The fracture system could have formed when subsurface magma ceased flowing and the overlying ground collapsed. Another possibility is that water-ice could have formed along the fractures and the subsequent sublimation of the ice resulted in a partial collapse.
This image links to the original captioned image by HiRISE.
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