P24A-03
Wright Valley Sediments as Potential Analogs for Martian Surface Processes

Tuesday, 15 December 2015: 16:30
2007 (Moscone West)
Peter A J Englert, Univ Hawaii Manoa, Honolulu, HI, United States, Janice L Bishop, SETI Institute Mountain View, Mountain View, CA, United States, Shital Patel, San Jose State University, Chemistry, San Jose, CA, United States, Everett K Gibson, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, United States and Christian Koeberl, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Abstract:
The Antarctic Dry Valleys (ADV) may provide a unique terrestrial analog for current Martian surface processes. The Wright Valley located in the ADV contains streams, lakes and ponds that host highly saline, sedimentary environments. This project highlights comparisons of formation and salt accumulation processes at the Don Juan Pond (DJP) and Don Quixote Pond (DQP). These are located in the north and south forks of the Wright Valley, which are unique areas where unusual terrestrial processes can be studied. DQP is located in the western part of the north fork about 100 m above mean seawater level. The DQP Valley walls are up to 2500 m high and the brine is seasonally frozen. DJP from the south fork is located ~9 km west of Lake Vanda. The basin floor is 117 m above mean seawater level with activity to the north and south rising above 1000 m. The DJP brine does not freeze and may be a model environment for Ca and Cl weathering and distribution on Mars.

Our findings indicate that DJP and DQP have formed in similar climatic and geological environments, but likely experienced different formation conditions. Samples were collected from surface, soil pits and depth profiles during the 1979/1980, the 1990/1991 and the 2005/2006 field seasons. Elemental abundances and mineralogy were evaluated for several sets of sediments. The DJP basin shows low surface abundances of halite and relatively high abundances of sulfates throughout with gypsum or anhydrite dominating at different locations. The DQP area has high surface abundances of halite with gypsum present as the major sulfate. Two models have been proposed to explain these differences: DQP may have formed through a combination of shallow and some deep groundwater influx, while deep groundwater upwelling likely played the dominant role of salt formation at DJP. Our study seeks to understand the formation of DQP and DJP as unique terrestrial processes and as models for Ca, Cl, and S weathering and distribution on Mars.

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