Dissertation done, and the likelihood of Martian glaciers in Cornwall, Wales and south-west England

So, the dissertation is done now, you can get a copy here, or a special tablet-optimised version here. The latter is using the US Supreme Court's paper size and Century Schoolbook font, as was advised to me by http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Page_Layout.

In the dissertation itself, I explain that the Martian terrain is segmented using RSGISLib and a classifier function assigned to the segments using the Souness et al. 2012 glacier-like forms as a guide.

So what if we apply it to a terrain that is not on Mars? The Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission data is available at a similar resolution to that from HRSC for Mars.

I have done the segmentation for areas of Wales, Cornwall and the southwest of England using topography only rather than integrating the red image field, since it wouldn't really be comparable with all the vegetation etc. on the Earth.

The same procedure of highlighting segments with log(K) > 12, 13, 14, 15 with a semi-transparent overlay is used. The background images are from Landsat 8 using bands 6, 5, 2 for RGB. All images from 25th July 2014.

Ordnance Survey GB numerical coordinates are used.

Not much in West Cornwall, except on the north-facing slopes west of St. Ives. There are a few more segments on the North Cornwall coast and in some areas of southeast Cornwall.

The north coast of West Penwith has a high likelihood of Martian glaciers, see also the map in the following post which shows a relatively shallow area of sea that would have been dry land in the Early Holocene, perhaps sediment deposited by the Martian glaciers at some point.

Some martian glaciers expected on the northern fringe of Dartmoor near Okehampton, but perhaps surprisingly also in south Devon.

Exmoor seems a favoured location for martian glaciers.

The Welsh valleys and the Brecon Beacons are also highlighted for a high likelihood of martian glaciers.

Since Wales generally has a higher likelihood of martian glaciers, I have used a slightly different scaling with only starting to highlight at log(K) > 13:

A close up of the Valleys and Brecon Beacons:

Mid-Wales:

North Wales:

Snowdonia:

Aberystwyth area:

The southern part of Cwm Rheidol appears particularly favoured for martian glaciers.