Widespread excess ice in Arcadia Planitia, Mars
By A. Bramson, S. Byrne, Nathaniel E. Putzig, S. Sutton, Jeffrey J. Plaut, T. Brothers, John W. Holt. 2015
164 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The distribution of subsurface water ice on Mars is a key constraint on past climate, while the volumetric concentration of buried ice (pore‐filling versus excess) provides information about the process that led to its deposition. We investigate the subsurface of Arcadia Planitia by measuring the depth of terraces in simple impact craters and mapping a widespread subsurface reflection in radar sounding data. Assuming that the contrast in material strengths responsible for the terracing is the same dielectric interface that causes the radar reflection, we can combine these data to estimate the dielectric constant of the overlying material. We compare these results to a three‐component dielectric mixing model to constrain composition. Our results indicate a widespread, decameters‐thick layer that is excess water ice ~104 km3 in volume. The accumulation and long‐term preservation of this ice is a challenge for current Martian climate models.
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f1a553102166c82bfaf55fcbf52aa3ccc5a593f1
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- C. Stuurman
- G. Osinski
- Joseph Levy
- B. Campbell
- John W. Holt
- T. Brothers
- M. Kerrigan
Citations in the corpus
- SHARAD detection and characterization of subsurface water ice deposits in Utopia Planitia, Mars (2016, methodology): “…on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a radar sounder that has been used to characterize the ice content of a variety of features on Mars [Bramson et al., 2015; Holt et al., 2008; Plaut et al., 2009; Nunes et al., 2011; Supporting Information: • Supporting Information S1 • Figures S1 •…”