How Much of the Sediment in Gale Crater’s Central Mound Was Fluvially Transported?

Introduction: While there is a broad consensus that the central mound in Gale crater is sedimentary in origin, there remains stark disagreement about the nature of the medium that transported and deposited those sediments, particularly if the dominant agent was wind or water. Results from the Curiosity rover indicate evidence for fluvial deposition of sediments on the crater floor [1-3]. But how much of the central mound is attributable to fluvial and/or lacustrine processes? Here, we address this question by conducting a simple mass-balance approach to compare the volume of the mound with the transportation capacity of the contributing fluvial network. Mound volume: The mound volume was obtained using gridded altimetry data from the MOLA instrument and stereo-image derived topography from HRSC. We determined the difference in elevation between the mound surface and inferred basal level (ap-prox. –4.5 km elevation). The average mound height is 2.2 km, and the resulting mound volume is ~9 × 10