The Importance of Lake Overflow Floods for Early Martian Landscape Evolution: Insights from Licus Vallis
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چکیده
Introduction: Open-basin lake outlet valleys are incised when water breaches the basin-confining topography and overflows. Outlet valleys record this flooding event and provide insight into how the lake and surrounding terrain evolved over time [1–5]. Here we present a study of the paleolake outlet Licus Vallis, a >350 km long, >2 km wide, >100 m deep valley that heads at the outlet breach of an ~30 km diameter impact crater (Fig. 1). Multiple geomorphic features of this valley system suggest it records a more complex evolution than formation from a single lake overflow flood. This provides unique insight into the paleohydrology of lakes on early Mars, as we can make inferences beyond the most recent phase of activity.
منابع مشابه
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