Athabasca Valles is an outflow channel on Mars, cut into its surface by catastrophic flooding. It is one of the youngest known of these structures, probably forming only in the geologically recent past of Mars. The flood produced distinctive "teardrop" landforms similar to those found in the channeled scabland region of the United States on Earth. It is thought that these landforms were produced though depositional processes wherein the floodwate...
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Athabasca Valles is an outflow channel on Mars, cut into its surface by catastrophic flooding. It is one of the youngest known of these structures, probably forming only in the geologically recent past of Mars. The flood produced distinctive "teardrop" landforms similar to those found in the channeled scabland region of the United States on Earth. It is thought that these landforms were produced though depositional processes wherein the floodwaters dropped sediment behind resistant bedrock outcroppings and craters. The source of water for the flood is thought to be Cerberus Fossae, at 10 N and 157 E. Groundwater may have been trapped under a cryosphere which was broken when the fossae was created.
The very high spatial resolution images from the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed that all the flood features are draped by lava flows (Jaeger et al., 2007).
Research, published in January 2010, described the discovery of a vast single lava flow, the size...
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