Vertical Analysis of Martian Drainage Basins

Abstract

We have performed a vertical analysis of drainage basins on Mars that were computationally extracted from DEMs based on the MOLA data. Longitudinal profiles of main streams are calculated and the slope-area relation is established for 20 basins coming from assorted martian locations. An identical analysis is done for 19 terrestrial river basins. Our results show that, in comparison to terrestrial basins, martian basins have more linear longitudinal profiles, more frequent existence of knickpoints, predominance of asymmetric location of the main stream in the basin, and smaller values of concavity exponent. This suggests a limited role for surface runoff on the global scale. However, two basins extracted from the slopes of martian volcanoes show a strong similarity to terrestrial basins, indicating a possible local role for the process of surface runoff.