New Martian valley network volume estimate consistent with ancient ocean and warm and wet climate.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 28580943.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms15766 and PMC identifier 5465386.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The volume of Martian valley network (VN) cavity and the amount of water needed to create the cavity by erosion are of significant importance for understanding the early Martian climate, the style and rate of hydrologic cycling, and the possibility of an ancient ocean. However, previous attempts at estimating these two quantities were based on selected valleys or at local sites using crude estimates of VN length, width and depth. Here we employed an innovative progressive black top hat transformation method to estimate them on a global scale based on the depth of each valley pixel. The conservative estimate of the minimum global VN volume is 1.74 × 10<sup>14</sup> m<sup>3</sup> and minimum cumulative volume of water required is 6.86 × 10<sup>17</sup> m<sup>3</sup> (or ∼5 km of global equivalent layer, GEL). Both are much larger than previous estimates and are consistent with an early warm and wet climate with active hydrologic cycling involving an ocean.