Phlegra Montes

In the final instalment of my posts giving a summary of the northern mid-latitudes of Mars, I will present the Phlegra Montes area, in the easternmost part (if you're working with -180 to 180° longitudes as I am) of the northern hemisphere.

This area has some special interest taken in it lately, with a paper giving evidence for wet-based glaciation in the area written recently  Eskers in a complete, wet-based glacial system in the Phlegra Montes region, Mars (Gallagher and Balme 2015). link

The HRSC tiles h1423, h1628 and h1412 overlaid on MOC image mosaic and colourised by elevation.

I use the same elevation colour ramp for HRSC tiles as in Utopia Planitia as follows:

MOLA elevation alone.

Hillshaded MOLA elevation.

Northernmost region:

With classifier functions for 'head' and 'extent'.

Two Souness GLFs are just missed by the HRSC coverage.

A little further south:

Relatively few Souness GLFs are found in this area.

In this region the GLFs are often found around relatively small isolated mesas, though many some of these do not host a catalogued GLF and look similar to the classifier.

Close up of region around Souness 167 and 168.

HRSC nadir image.

With classifier function.

 

Central region of Phlegra Montes:

A number of Souness GLFs are found in this area.

With classifier function

Zooming in a bit more

A little to the south of the previous image

Further to the south again

Southern Phlegra Montes area

This covers the same region as the study areas of the Gallagher and Balme 2015 paper. They postulate wet-based glaciation in this area, arguing this was made possible by geothermal heat flux.

Nadir images.

With the classifier.

The detailed study area from the paper at ~163°E, 32.5°N, with a lineated valley fill at the left and the postulated wet-based glacial forms including sinuous ridges near the centre of this image.

HRSC nadir image

With the classifier.