Dark slope streaks on Mars: Are aqueous processes involved?

Ferris, J. C.; Dohm, J. M.; Baker, Victor R.; Maddock, Thomas

doi:10.1029/2002gl014936

Cited by 64 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Several processes have been proposed to explain these features, where most authors prefer dry mechanisms (Sullivan et al 2001;Miyamoto et al 2004;Baratoux et al 2006;Chuang et al 2007), including the influence of diurnal CO 2 sublimation (Piqueux et al 2016). However, some of the morphological attributes are hard to explain with dry flows (Brusnikin et al 2016) and therefore wet mechanisms cannot be excluded and these may involve brine solutions (Ferguson & Lucchitta 1984;Ferris et al 2002;Miyamoto et al 2004;Marchant & Head 2007;Kreslavsky & Head 2009;Mushkin et al 2010;Kolb et al 2010). If liquid water is present in these features then the boiling mechanisms presented here should be possible because they form at low latitudes and on high slopes where the surface temperatures can be locally high ).…”

Section: Implication For Martian Landscape Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Downslope sediment transport by boiling liquid water under Mars-like conditions: experiments and potential implications for Martian gullies

Herny

Conway

Raack

et al. 2018

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Gullies are widespread morphological features on Mars for which current changes have been observed. Liquid water has been one of the potential mechanisms to explain their formation and activity. However, under present-day Martian conditions, liquid water is unstable and should only be transiently present in small amounts at the surface. Yet little attention has been paid to the mechanisms by which unstable water transports sediment under low atmospheric pressure. Here we present the results of laboratory experiments studying the interaction between liquid water flowing over a sand bed under Mars-like atmospheric pressure (c. 9 mbar). The experiments were performed in a Mars Simulation Chamber (at the Open University, UK), in which we placed a test bed of fine sand at a 25°slope. We chose to investigate the influence of two parameters: the temperature of the water and the temperature of the sand. We performed 27 experiments with nine different combinations of water and sand temperatures ranging from 278 to 297 K. Under all experimental conditions, the water was boiling. We investigated and compared the types and timing of sediment transport events, and the shapes, characteristics and volumes of the resulting morphologies. In agreement with previous laboratory studies we found that more intense boiling increased the volume of sediment transported for a given volume of water. We found four main types of sediment transport: entrainment by overland flow; grain ejection; grain avalanches; and levitation of saturated sand pellets. Our results showed that increasing sand temperature was the main driving parameter in increasing the sand transport and in modifying the dominant sediment transport mechanism. The temperature of the water played a negligible or minor role, apart from the duration of sand ejection and avalanches, which lasted longer at low water temperature. At low sand temperature the majority of the sand was transported by overland flow of the liquid water. At higher sand temperatures the transport was dominated by processes triggered by the boiling behaviour of the water. At the highest temperatures, sediment transport was dominated by the formation of levitating pellets, dry avalanches and ejection of the sand grains. This resulted in a transport volume about nine times greater at a sand temperature of 297 K compared with 278 K. Our heat transfer scaling shows that the boiling behaviour will be enhanced under Martian low gravity, resulting in more efficient transport of sediment by levitating sand pellets even at temperatures close to the triple point. Our results showed that the boiling intensity played an important role in the physics of sediment transport by liquid water. This implied that the amount of water required to produce morphological changes at the surface of Mars could be lower than previously estimated by assuming stable liquid water. Boiling is a critical process to be considered when assessing gully formation and modification mechanisms mobilized by liquid water. Our work could ha...

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Section: Implication For Martian Landscape Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Downslope sediment transport by boiling liquid water under Mars-like conditions: experiments and potential implications for Martian gullies

Herny

Conway

Raack

et al. 2018

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“…Eventually, a run-away percolation front would form on an impermeable layer causing the observed flow. Groundwater discharge has been proposed as an alternative explanation for these features (Ferris et al 2002).…”

Section: Slope Streaksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water and Brines on Mars: Current Evidence and Implications for MSL

2013

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Liquid water is a basic ingredient for life as we know it. Therefore, in order to understand the habitability of other planets we must first understand the behavior of water on them. Mars is the most Earth-like planet in the solar system and it has large reservoirs of H 2 O. Here, we review the current evidence for pure liquid water and brines on Mars, and discuss their implications for future and current missions such as the Mars Science Laboratory.Neither liquid water nor liquid brines are currently stable on the surface of Mars, but they could be present temporarily in a few areas of the planet. Pure liquid water is unlikely to be present, even temporarily, on the surface of Mars because evaporation into the extremely dry atmosphere would inhibit the formation of the liquid phase, where the temperature and pressure are high enough so that water would neither freeze nor boil. The exception to this is that monolayers of liquid water, referred to as undercooled liquid interfacial water, could exist on most of the Martian surface. In a few places liquid brines could exist temporarily on the surface because they could form at cryogenic temperatures, near ice or frost deposits where sublimation could be inhibited by the presence of nearly saturated air.Both liquid water and liquid brines might exist in the shallow subsurface because even a thin layer of soil forms an effective barrier against sublimation allowing pure liquid water to form sporadically in a few places, or liquid brines to form over longer periods of time in large portions of the planet. At greater depths, ice deposits could melt where the soil conductivity is low enough to blanket the deeper subsurface effectively. This could cause the formation of aquifers if the deeper soil is sufficiently permeable and an impermeable layer exists below the source of water.The fact that liquid brines and groundwater are likely to exist on Mars has important implications for geochemistry, glaciology, mineralogy, weathering and the habitability of Mars.

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“…Slope streaks are gravity-driven albedo features observed on Martian slopes since the Viking missions (Ferguson and Lucchitta, 1984). Their possible mechanisms of formation was debated, invoking alternatively dry granular flow or wet mast wasting (Sullivan et al, 2001;Ferris et al, 2002;Miyamoto et al, 2004;Kreslavsky and Head, 2009). Systematic mapping of slope streaks from HRSC images indicates that the distribution of slope streaks is correlated with prevailing wind 2 km dust devils 2 km 2 km directions and zones of preferential dust accumulation .…”

Section: Aeolian Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying geological processes on Mars—Results of the high resolution stereo camera (HRSC) on Mars express

Jaumann

Tirsch

Hauber

et al. 2015

Planetary and Space Science

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a b s t r a c tThis review summarizes the use of High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) data as an instrumental tool and its application in the analysis of geological processes and landforms on Mars during the last 10 years of operation. High-resolution digital elevations models on a local to regional scale are the unique strength of the HRSC instrument. The analysis of these data products enabled quantifying geological processes such as effusion rates of lava flows, tectonic deformation, discharge of water in channels, formation timescales of deltas, geometry of sedimentary deposits as well as estimating the age of geological units by crater size-frequency distribution measurements. Both the quantification of geological processes and the age determination allow constraining the evolution of Martian geologic activity in space and time. A second major contribution of HRSC is the discovery of episodicity in the intensity of geological processes on Mars. This has been revealed by comparative age dating of volcanic, fluvial, glacial, and lacustrine deposits.Volcanic processes on Mars have been active over more than 4 Gyr, with peak phases in all three geologic epochs, generally ceasing towards the Amazonian. Fluvial and lacustrine activity phases spread a time span from Noachian until Amazonian times, but detailed studies show that they have been interrupted by multiple and long Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

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Dark slope streaks on Mars: Are aqueous processes involved?

Cited by 64 publications

References 9 publications

Downslope sediment transport by boiling liquid water under Mars-like conditions: experiments and potential implications for Martian gullies

Downslope sediment transport by boiling liquid water under Mars-like conditions: experiments and potential implications for Martian gullies

Water and Brines on Mars: Current Evidence and Implications for MSL

Quantifying geological processes on Mars—Results of the high resolution stereo camera (HRSC) on Mars express

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