The Origin of Transverse Aeolian Ridges on Mars

Abstract:

Transverse aeolian ridges, or TARs, are found throughout the tropics of Mars and typically appear as rows of bright ripples that are several meters tall and spaced semi-regularly several tens of meters apart. The origin of these features remained mysterious for decades after their discovery in Viking and Mars Global Surveyor images. A new hypothesis (Geissler, 2014, 10.1002-2014JE004633) suggests that TARs might be deposits left behind by dusty turbidity currents in the Martian atmosphere. The hypothesis assumes that the micron-sized dust particles are transported in suspension in turbulent flows, driven both by the winds and by gravity. The dust is concentrated near the surface, much like turbidity currents on Earth. Because of the difference in density, however, the dust clouds behave as a fluid distinct from the clear sky above. In particular, waves can appear at the surface of the dense “fluid” when the flows encounter topographic obstacles along their paths. Such gravity waves travel at speeds that are determined by gravity and the thickness of the flow, much like waves in shallow water on Earth. When the wave propagation speed matches the speed of the flow, stationary waves are produced that persist in fixed locations. The bedforms deposited by such stationary waves are called “antidunes” (Gilbert, 1914, USGS Prof. Paper 86) because, unlike dunes, they can migrate upstream in a supercritical flow. Antidunes are commonly seen in shallow, high energy fluvial deposits on Earth. They are usually destroyed as quickly as they form, and are rarely preserved. The Martian TARs survive because the dust is sticky; TARs are deposited by currents that are much slower than the wind speeds needed to lift the dust again. Subaerial antidunes are much rarer on Earth and less well studied, and so the giant subaerial stationary antidunes of Mars, if that is what the TARs turn out to be, may teach us much about a geological process that is poorly known on our planet.