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Geography of Mars

Final Study Guide

Dr. Christine M. Rodrigue

Department of Geography
California State University
Long Beach, CA 90840-1101
1 (562) 985-8432
rodrigue@csulb.edu

Be familiar with the following:

(Check back, as I may edit this as the final develops!)
  • Deep time on Mars
    • The three martian periods, their relative sequence, rough absolute time ranges, and main areological events
      • Noachian
      • Hesperian
      • Amazonian
    • The geochemical approach to dividing time on Mars: relative sequence, rough absolute time, predominant geochemical processes, how this system compares with the traditional system.
      • Phylosian (smectite and other clays that can only form in the presence of neutral/alkaline water)
      • Theiikian (sulfates or salts of sulfuric acid, which suggests the acidification of water due to the intensity of volcanic eruptions then)
      • Siderikian (anhydrous oxides of iron, which form from oxidation of iron-bearing minerals in dry conditions)
    • Estimating relative and absolute age of martian surfaces
      • Crater counting
        • Crater density and size distribution
        • The nuts and bolts of doing crater counts:
          • Hartmann-Neukum isochron chart approach (like you did in Lab 7)
          • CraterStats2 + ArcGIS approach (like you did in Lab 10)
          • Advantages and shortcomings of the two different approaches
        • Problems with crater-counting
        • How might secondary craters be distinguished from primary craters?
      • Superposition and cross-cutting relationships

  • Regionalization of the Mars surface
    • Second order features and their main characteristics:
      • The four great craters (Hellas, Argyre, Isidis, and Utopia planitiæ
      • Elysium Rise
      • The great canyon: Valles Marineris
      • The Chryse Trough hydrological drainage
      • The Kasei Valles outflow channels
      • Thaumasia block: plate or megalandslide?
      • Syrtis Major "Blue Scorpion" aka "Hourglass Sea" and æolian processes
      • Polar ice caps
    • Third order landscapes associated with the three different eras and their most salient characteristics
      • Noachian (Noachis Terra, Aonia Terra, Terra Sirenum, Terra Cimmeria, Promethei Terra, Tyrrhena Terra, Terra Sabæa, Arabia Terra, Margaritifer Terra, Xanthe Terra, and Tempe Terra)
      • Hesperian (Hesperia Planum, Hellas Planitia floor deposits, Malea Planum, Syria-Thaumasia block, Lunæ Planum, Chryse Planitia, North Polar Basin, and western Isidis Planita floor)
      • Amazonian (Amazonis Planitia, Elysium Planitia, Elysium Rise lavas and lahars, Utopia Planitia, Adamas Planitia, Acidalia Planitia, Planum Boreum, Planum Australe, Arcadia Planitia, the lavas of Tharsis Rise and Dædalia Planum)

  • Hydrosphere
    • Could Mars have had an ocean and lakes/seas at various points in the Noachian?
    • Could water alteration of basalts and basaltic regolith have taken place in a Noachian environment just as dry and cold as today's Amazonian environment? If so, how?
    • Fe/Mg smectite clays and the pH of water altering basalts to produce them
    • Sulfates and the pH of water altering basalts to produce them
    • What does a lot of olivine suggest about the presence or absence of water in a landscape?
    • Which secondary minerals suggest alteration by the evaporation of waters and brines in an enclosed basin?
    • What is meant by the carbonate puzzle?

  • Atmosphere (Note: We ran out of class time for this, so you are on your own with the lecture notes and viewgraphs for atmosphere, weather, and climate. I tried to make the study guide a little more detailed in here)
    • Compare and contrast the atmospheres of Mars and Earth in terms of chemical composition, dustiness, barometric pressure, temperature and altitude relationships (layers), thickness, auroræ
    • Composition
      • What is the dominant gas in Mars' atmosphere?
      • What are the second and third most common gasses?
      • Why is there so little oxygen on Mars?
      • Why is there almost no ozone on Mars and why might that be a problem for human visitors to Mars?
      • Dominant water and carbon dioxide fluxes (movement from one pole through the atmosphere to the other pole) and Martian seasonality
    • Vertical structure of the atmosphere can be classified by several different considerations. These include how temperature changes with altitude, the degree of mechanical mixing of gasses, degree of ionization, and sputtering from the top of the atmosphere. The different considerations create differing layering schemes, and their starts and ends do not perfectly align with one another, so it can be confusing.
      • Vertical pressure structure of the atmosphere: Inverse exponential relationship between altitude and air pressure
      • Vertical compositional and mechanical structure
        • Homosphere vs. heterosphere, mechanical mixing, gravitational layering
          • Which gasses settle toward the bottom of the heterosphere? Which toward the top?
          • Isotopes of individual gasses are also found more commonly in different levels of the heterosphere. For example, what about isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium (2H) and regular hydrogen (1H)?
        • What is the exosphere?
          • It is roughly equivalent to which of the two chemical/mechanical layers (homosphere or heterosphere?)?
          • What goes on in the exosphere and why is that important for understanding the loss of Mars' oceans (and the rusty color of Mars)?
        • Why can water sublimation/vaporization lead to the loss of water (perhaps even an ocean's worth) from Mars?
      • Vertical temperature structure of the atmosphere
        • Make sure you know what inverse and direct associations are ... ...
        • Troposphere (inverse relationship between altitude and temperature, thickness compared with Earth's)
        • Is there a stratosphere akin to Earth's on Mars? Why or why not?
        • Mesosphere (how does it contrast with Earth's in the relationship between altitude and temperature? about how thick is it/how far up does it go?)
        • Thermosphere (direct relationship between altitude and temperature, thickness/starting/ending altitudes compared with Earth's)
        • Inner thermosphere
          • Ionosphere
          • What goes on in the ionosphere? (ultraviolet solar energy and what it does to molecules and atoms, associated glows and auroræ)
        • Outer thermosphere
          • Impressive-sounding temperatures (but low energy density)
          • Heterosphere/exosphere (where dissociated hydrogen from water is lost to space)
    • Geochemical cycles and climate
      • Hydrological cycle -- various "stores" of water and fluxes among them, what the high deuterium to ordinary hydrogen (2H:1H) implies for what happened to the surface waters of Mars
      • Carbon cycle -- various stores and fluxes and impact of fluxes on atmospheric pressure
      • Oxygen cycle -- amount, implications of a "normal" ratio among 18O and the lighter isotopes
      • Nitrogen cycle -- amount, implications of the excessive ratio of 15N to the lighter 14N
      • Argon cycle -- amount, variations in that amount, and what causes variation in this noble (unreactive) gas
    • Climate change on Mars
      • Evidence for glaciation at relatively low latitudes in and around the Elysium Montes and eastern Hellas Planitia
      • Why might sapping alcoves/channels/aprons evidencing liquid flow be found on poleward-facing slopes at low or mid latitudes?
      • Gullying, its geography, and how that geography might be connected with obliquity changes
      • Recent polar climate change on Mars and how it resembles and may differ from recent climate change on Earth
    • Martian weather
      • Know the main Martian weather features and the locations and seasons you can expect them: polar cyclones, dust devils/dust storms, mid-latitude wave systems, thermal tides, upslope-downslope breeze/wind systems, land-"sea" breezes)
      • How does atmospheric clarity/dustiness affect these weather phenomena and how might surface thermal inertia affect some of the wind systems?
      • Be able to read the water phase diagram, the X-Y graph showing the triple-point of water, to predict, generally, how water will behave in different temperature and pressure conditions
    • Martian climates
      • Understand Hadley cell circulation and be able to compare and contrast the Hadley systems on Mars and Earth.
      • How does the climate system (equatorial, transitional, polar) vary over the course of the year, how does it differ in the northern and southern hemispheres, and why is that hemispheric contrast more dramatic on Mars than on Earth?

  • Social sciences and humanities on Mars
    • Science fiction
      • Where does "War of the Worlds" and "Mars Attacks!" fit in the big trends in science fiction themes?
      • How did science fiction respond to late nineteenth and early twentieth century Earth-based remote sensing and spectroscopy showing the lack of canals on Mars, the planet's extreme cold and low atmospheric density, and the near lack of oxygen? In other words, how was Mars depicted up until about the 1960s in science fiction?
      • How did science fiction change after the Mariner and Viking missions?
    • In which ways do all four popular crazes concerning Mars (canals, radio signals, and the Face on Mars, and now "nuclear war on Mars") resemble one another in terms of how they develop and commonalities among the people pushing them?

  • Other topics:
    • Natural fission reactor in Acidalia Planitia and Oklo, Gabon, West Africa
    • Be able to look at a complex terrain on Mars and pick out some of the processes that might explain and sequence its many features.

Tips:

  • Do all the reading, highlighting very judiciously, so you can speed scan the highlights the night before the test
    • Forget, Costard, and Lognonné section 3
    • Forget, Costard, and Lognonné section 4
  • Avail yourself of my lecture notes, which I put online and accessible from the home page: https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/mars/
  • The home page has a link to that MOLA map that I labeled with lots of useful place names
  • I also put a link to the new Mars geology map up there
  • You can also download GIMP and use it to view that interactive map of Mars' regions, which is also linked on the web page.
  • If your computer can't handle a hog of a program like GIMP and your heart sinks at the prospect of learning a new program, I've created a web page that let's you interactively view the boundaries of all first order, second order, and third order landscapes and features! Here you go: https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/mars/regions/
  • Make use of the viewgraphs.
  • The final is open everything, but you need to be familiar enough with everything to be able to find it when you're freaking out. Acquiring that familiarity is the goal of your studying. Annotate this study guide with where you found relevant information.
  • During the test, you can open the lecture notes and labs and then use the search function of the browser to find things you know you read about. You can also avail yourself of the textbook's index to find things in there fast.
  • Studying with your colleagues is recommended on the basis of educational research findings: You can get hold of them to schedule a review session through BeachBoard, also linked below and on the course home page. And misery loves company!

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Last Updated: 12/10/22