Morphology and origin of an evaporitic dome in the eastern Tithonium Chasma, Mars

Evaporite karst in three interior layered deposits in Iani Chaos, Mars

“…4E), and the evaporite karst described in other regions of the Earth (Sauro, 1996;Johnson, 1997;Ford, 1998;Gutiérrez Elorza and Gutiérrez Santolalla, 1998;Maldonado et al, 2000;Ferrarese et al, 2002;Cucchi and Zini, 2003;Parise and Trocino, 2005;Gustavson et al, 2006;Gutiérrez et al, 2008;Stafford et al, 2008;Galve et al, 2009;Di Maggio et al, 2012). Moreover, they strongly resembled the evaporite doline described in other regions of Mars, such as Tithonium Chasma (Baioni et al, 2009;Baioni and Wezel, 2010;Baioni, 2013), Coprates Chasma (Baioni et al, 2011), Hebes Chasma (Grindrod and Balme, 2010;Jackson et al, 2011), Sinus Meridiani (Baioni and Sgavetti, 2013;Baioni et al, 2014) and other regions (McKay and Nedell, 1988;Schaeffer, 1990;Spencer and Fanale, 1990).…”

“…These findings provide evidence for the presence of liquid water, probably caused by the melting of permafrost or ice-rich ground, providing the water necessary to stimulate dissolution processes. The melting of ice has also been assumed to provide the water necessary for dissolution and collapse processes, similar to hypothesised processes explaining the karst landforms and topography found in other regions of Mars, such as Sinus Meridiani (Baioni and Sgavetti, 2013), Tithonium Chasma (Baioni et al, 2009;Baioni and Wezel, 2010;Baioni, 2013), Coprates Chasma (Baioni et al, 2011), and Hebes Casma (Grindrod and Balme, 2010).…”

“…In recent years, the presence of soluble evaporite minerals on Mars -as evidenced by data from the OMEGA instrument (Bibring et al, 2006) on the Mars Express, the Mars Exploration Rovers, and the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars instrument (Murchie et al, 2007) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) -have supported the possible development of evaporite karst similar to that on Earth (Stafford and Boston, 2005) and the presence of karstic terrains with associated caves (Johnston et al, 2006). Recent works based on new highresolution images have demonstrated the presence of karst landforms and processes in Martian evaporite deposits (Baioni et al, 2009;Baioni and Wezel, 2010;Grindrod and Balme, 2010;Jackson et al, 2011;Wezel and Baioni, 2014) and have highlighted the usefulness of the karst landforms as lithological, stratigraphic (Baioni and Sgavetti, 2013), and paleoclimatic (Baioni et al, 2011;Baioni, 2013) markers.…”

Topographic, spectral and thermal inertia analysis of interior layered deposits in Iani Chaos, Mars

“…Spring deposits should display strong lateral and vertical facies variations (Baioni and Wezel, 2010) and Fig. 6b shows this kind of behaviour in the flat-lying layered units in central region A.…”

“…Salt diapirism has been hypothesised to be a viable formation method for the dome-like morphology of many ILDs (Baioni and Wezel, 2010). Milliken et al (2007) note that geomorphic similarities are apparent between features formed by salt-tectonism on Earth (Great Kavir, Iran) and similar features in Melas and Candor Chasma in central Valles Marineris on Mars.…”