Geology Club Seminar

Wind dominates the surface of modern Mars, leaving behind traces of its passage in the geomorphology. Surface features can be used to reconstruct wind regimes, but are confined to the relatively recent past. To probe the ancient aeolian history of Mars, one must look to the examples of preserved aeolian sandstones. The dominance of aeolian activity on modern Mars suggests that preserved aeolian sandstones should be common. However, such abundance would be contrary to the terrestrial conventional wisdom that aeolian sandstones form in subsiding basins or in association with changing water table levels, neither of which are available as mechanisms on Mars. To investigate the paradoxical relationship between martian aeolian activity and presumptive preservation, we will take a look at potential aeolian sandstones and relationships between dunes on Earth and Mars.