erosion

May 3, 2022

Historical wind and modern wind

May 3, 2022 I don’t typically have much time for these posts anymore. The pandemic seems to have changed everything. But sometimes I need to remind myself why I do this for a living. Going to look through Mars’ gorgeous […]
February 1, 2021

Both wind-carved *and* ancient

1 February, 2021 Are we tired of the pandemic yet? My kids haven’t gone to an actual school since last March. Fortunately we’re all healthy. I’m able to do most of my work, but it’s not easy. So let’s go […]
October 18, 2018

The martian wind is a geologist

Right now, the Fourth Landing Site Workshop for the Mars 2020 rover mission is happening. It’s the last one, and in a few hours the scientists attending the workshop will vote on which of four sites they think the rover […]
September 24, 2018

Complexity

Being a geomorphologist and reading a landscape is a little bit like being one of the forensic scientists on CSI (or choose your own favorite investigative show). A Mars geomorphologist usually has to do this entirely by remote sensing. So […]
August 13, 2018

Where dunes once trod

Mars has been dusty, and that’s affecting the quality of HiRISE images (just look at the recent images in the catalog and you’ll see they’re not that great). That’s made it hard for me to choose a good one for […]
March 26, 2018

Wind-exposed layers

On Earth, layers comprising the geological record of an area are most often exposed by fluvial erosion, as a river cuts through rock (a typical example is the Grand Canyon). On Mars, fluvial channels are not so common (especially in […]
March 1, 2018

Dune trails

There’s so much going on in this 0.75×0.75 km (0.47×0.47 mi) image. You’re looking at a broad dune migrating toward the upper right. It’s early summer, but this is close enough to the north pole that some winter ice lingers […]
January 30, 2018

Smash! Whoosh…

A Piece of Mars: The dark splash pattern in this 0.9×0.9 km (0.56×0.56 mi) scene (click on it for a better view) is the site of an impact crater that appeared between images sometime between August 2006 and March 2010 […]
January 22, 2018

Arnus Vallis, Mars

A Piece of Mars: This is a section of Arnus Vallis (scene is 1.25×1 km, 0.78×0.62 mi). It’s a >300 km long valley that was carved out, not by water, but by lava, long ago. Since then the wind has […]