Highlights
- Karst morphologies are detected in an ILD in Juventae Chasma
- The landforms display similarity with terrestrial karst
- The features of the karst landforms suggest a young erosional age
- The landforms suggest the presence of liquid water
- The landforms are markers of climatic changes occurred in the early Amazonian period
Abstract
This paper describes karst landforms observed in an interior layered deposit (ILD) located within Juventae Chasma a trough of the Valles Marineris, a rift system that belongs to the Tharsis region of Mars. The ILD investigated is characterized by spectral signatures of kieserite, an evaporitic mineral present on Earth. A morphologic and morphometric survey of the ILD surface performed on data of the Orbiter High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) highlighted the presence of depressions of various shapes and sizes. These landforms interpreted as dolines resemble similar karst landforms on Earth and in other regions of Mars. The observed karst landforms suggest the presence of liquid water, probably due to ice melting, in the Amazonian age.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5038/1827-806X.46.2.2085
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Baioni, Davide and Mario Tramontana.
2017.
Possible evaporite karst in an interior layered deposit in Juventae Chasma, Mars.
International Journal of Speleology,
46: 181-189.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/ijs/vol46/iss2/5
