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1
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0342498654
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note
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The debate over whether liquid water or some other liquid is responsible for fluid erosional landforms on Mars (including but not limited to the martian outflow channels and valley networks) is not specifically addressed in this work. Most geoscientists familiar with the martian landforms agree that water is the most likely candidate fluid (2); the only alternative is to speculate that some other completely unknown agent with properties essentially identical to those of water is or has been at work on Mars.
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4
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C. Sagan et al., Science 181, 1045 (1973).
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D. C. Pieri, Icarus 27, 25 (1976).
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Pieri, D.C.1
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D. C. Pieri, Science 210, 895 (1980).
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Oxford Univ. Press, New York
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M .H. Carr, Water on Mars (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1996).
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Carr, M.H.1
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0030724479
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P. H. Smith et al., Science 278, 1758 (1997).
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M. P. Golombek et al., Science 278, 1743 (1997).
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Golombek, M.P.1
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0342932824
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note
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MGS reached Mars on 12 September 1997 and began >1 year of effort to achieve a circular polar-mapping orbit. The mapping phase of the mission began in March 1999 and is scheduled to conclude in January 2001. An extended mission phase might follow. For a description of the mission and its schedule, see (37) and (38).
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0343368253
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in preparation
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M. H. Carr et al., in preparation.
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Carr, M.H.1
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0342498650
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note
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MOC images acquired during the Aerobraking 1 phase of the mission in late 1997 showed what we considered at the time to be possible evidence for seepage, including the walls of a crater at 65°S, 15°W (image AB1-07707), the walls and floor of a neighboring crater at 67°S, 15°W (image AB1-07708), and the walls of Nirgal Vallis (image AB1-00605). No images acquired in 1998 showed such landforms. Only when high-latitude southern hemisphere targets were again accessible to the MOC in 1999 were these features seen again.
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23
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0343368252
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note
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The MOC high-resolution camera cannot acquire images continuously, because its data acquisition rate is more than a factor of 1000 higher than the rate at which the data can be recorded by the spacecraft for transmission to Earth. Images are limited by the 80-Mbit buffer within the camera. Observing a specific feature on Mars requires that an orbit passes over the feature and that manual inspection recognizes and designates an image to be taken of the potential target. Imaging attempts are based on semiweekly orbit position predictions with uncertainties typically larger than the camera's field of view, the targeting inspection of Viking orbiter images that are over 100 times lower in resolution than MOC pictures, and uncertainty in the actual spacecraft position in relation to surface features that exceeds 20 km in places. For a description of the MOC experiment, see (39).
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25
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0002151708
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E. B. Eckel, Ed. National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Highway Research Board, Washington, DC
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D. J. Varnes, in Landslides and Engineering Practice, E. B. Eckel, Ed. (National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Highway Research Board, Washington, DC, 1958), pp. 20-47.
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(1958)
Landslides and Engineering Practice
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Varnes, D.J.1
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26
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0002796168
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R. L. Shuster and R. J. Kriszek, Eds. National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC
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D. J. Varnes, in Landslides, Analysis, and Control, R. L. Shuster and R. J. Kriszek, Eds. (National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC, 1978), pp. 11-33.
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(1978)
Landslides, Analysis, and Control
, pp. 11-33
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Varnes, D.J.1
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0343368248
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note
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The ages of features on other planets are typically difficult to establish, because the only indications of age are geomorphic and hence subject to large uncertainty. The traditional ways of telling relative age - superposition of one feature on top of another and crosscutting of one feature by another -have been adapted to extraterrestrial surfaces. On Mars, as on other planets with solid surfaces, the abundance of impact craters is often taken as a proxy for determination of age: The more craters superposed on a surface, the older the surface. Unfortunately, it is much more difficult to establish the age of a surface devoid of craters because of the uncertainties associated with the stochastic nature of impact bombardment.
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31
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0343368251
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The time scales over which processes create or modify eolian bedforms and patterned ground are typically very short. Although comparisons of MOC and Viking images have not shown any bedforms to have moved in the past 20 years (at the scale of tens of meters) (40, 47), their forms and locations suggest that they have been active relatively recently in martian history (40). On Earth, polygonally patterned ground typically forms in periglacial environments by repeated thermal cycling at and below the melting temperature of water [e.g., (42-44)]. Although a variety of formation mechanisms have been proposed, in all cases terrestrial patterned ground is thought to develop quite quickly on a geologic time scale; that is, polygons only take thousands to tens of thousands of years to form. Polygons can survive only for time scales of hundreds of thousands of years, even in areas where they are relics from past periods, owing to the fragility of the conditions under which they are developed and preserved. Thus, the martian landforms are probably older than 20 years but may be younger than a million years.
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32
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0343368250
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"Sapping" is a generic term applied to a host of processes that loosen and transport granular material away from an escarpment and that promote the further undermining and collapse of that escarpment (27-29). It is a process that typically proceeds headward; that is, it starts at the outflow point of a source of fluid and migrates toward the fluid source. In the case of springs, sapping occurs at the seepage line. From that point, alluvial and colluvial processes create deposits down-slope, and sapping undermines and promotes collapse above the seepage line, creating alcoves. A closely related terrestrial process is "piping," which involves the percolation or flow of subsurface fluid with sufficient pressure (flow or pore) to entrain materials (45-47). This entrainment removes support for overlying material, first creating irregular pits but often eventually leading to curvilinear depressions that resemble, or become through other processes, conduits for surficial runoff. On Earth, both sapping and piping occur together with other processes that operate to remove their debris products. Without such removal, the groundwater processes choke in their own detritus. In terrestrial desert settings, flash floods are essential to removing the accumulated products (48). Where the eroding bedrock is sandstone, wind transport also plays an important role in removing debris.
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34
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0343803844
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It is difficult to reconcile the environments where the gullies are observed with an origin requiring liquid water because of the cold temperatures and low atmospheric pressures. Being polar and subpolar, these features spend as much as half a martian year at or near the freezing point of carbon dioxide (at martian pressures, ∼148 K), or nearly 125 K below the triple point of water. Further, they occur on predominantly poleward-facing slopes, which are subject to substantially lower solar insolation and hence lower temperatures at any given latitude than the insolation and temperatures of adjacent flat, east/west, or equator-facing slopes. Most gullies occur in the southern hemisphere, which has a relatively high elevation, and hence at lower atmospheric pressure (increasing the evaporation rate).
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0342498648
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The only exceptions are the gullies in the south- and southeast-facing walls of Dao Vallis, which heads within and follows a course though materials associated with the ancient highland volcano, Hadriaca Patera.
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36
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0343803842
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3 (2.5 million liters or 660,000 gallons) of water, enough for 20 people for a year. Factors that would reduce the amount of water include evaporation and/or sublimation of the water after emplacement; factors that may increase the amount include greater apron thickness and higher water volume fractions.
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37
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0006840122
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A. Albee, Eos 77 (no. 45), 441 (1996).
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(1996)
Eos
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A. L. Albee et al., Science 279, 1671 (1998).
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Albee, A.L.1
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R. G. LaFleur, Ed. Allen & Unwin, Boston
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C. G. Higgins, in Groundwater as a Geomorphic Agent, R. G. LaFleur, Ed. (Allen & Unwin, Boston, 1984), pp. 18-58.
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(1984)
Groundwater as a Geomorphic Agent
, pp. 18-58
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Higgins, C.G.1
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50
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0342498644
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thesis, Arizona State University, Tempe
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C. J. Kafura, thesis, Arizona State University, Tempe (1988).
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(1988)
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Kafura, C.J.1
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0342932808
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note
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The authors express their appreciation to M. Caplinger, E. Jensen, S. Davis, W. Gross, D. Michna, J. Sandoval, K. Supulver, and J. Warren for their efforts in support of the MOC. Without their hard work and dedication, the images on which this work is based would not have been acquired. W. Dietrich provided early guidance to consideration of the origin of the landforms described here. Comments by two anonymous referees provided useful perspectives on our results. This work was supported by Jet Propulsion Laboratory contracts 959060 and 1200780.
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