The timing of resurfacing events in Southern Kasei Valles

Abstract

The second-largest outflow system on Mars is Kasei Valles. The southern branch of Kasei Valles includes two inner channels among the best-preserved examples of glacial and/or fluvial erosion. This study focuses on the landforms formed by surface processes within the midstream part of the southern branch of the Kasei Valles. We mapped the landforms and built a morpho-stratigraphical chronology using their cross-cutting relationships, and numerical crater dating. We interpret a complex geomorphological history, with various landforms in the study area, including fans, landslides, topographic barriers, strandlines, terraces and deeply incised canyons. Two coluvaial fans and a large landslide temporarily blocked the valles, forming topographical barriers to impound fluids (e.g., lava, mudflow, water). It has been suggested that the structures observed in the channels were formed by Bingham or Newtonian fluid. However, these fluids have disappeared but they have left the terraces and strandlines as their geomorphic imprints. The surface texture of the terraces implies that they were probably formed by a very low viscosity fluid that carved the fan, valley floor and formed terrace staircases and deep canyons. Crater statistics reveal two different temporal clusters of colluvial fan formation. The age of the older fan cluster in the Early Amazonian period, and the age of the younger fan cluster in the Late-Middle Amazonian period. The landslide is much younger and estimated to have formed 122 Ma ago, allowing us to constrain the timing of the latest erosional period. The youngest studied geomorphic features are the platy-textured deposits emplaced either as lavas or mudflows, aged 90 Ma, covering the floor of the valles. The strandlines defining the limits of the youngest erosional (thermal) process within the study area truncate the landslide but not the platy-textured features. Therefore, they are older than 90 Ma but younger than 122 Ma, implying environmental conditions sufficient to have allowed a liquid fluid body at the Martian surface during the Latest Amazonian period. Our data suggest that the presence of well-developed terraces between strandlines requires the presence of a fluid (e.g. water, liquid lava, mud) that ponded and subsequently evacuated from the study area.