Dynamic processes at the ends of collisional mountain chains

Understanding of the relationships between tectonic deformation and exhumation in the Himalaya remains incomplete, especially at the ends of the chain.

Valley Networks and the Record of Glaciation on Ancient Mars

The lack of evidence for large-scale glacial landscapes on Mars has led to the belief that ancient glaciations had to be frozen to the ground. Here we propose that the fingerprints of Martian wet-based glaciation should be the remnants of the ice sheet drainage system instead of landforms generally associated with terrestrial ice sheets. We use the terrestrial glacial hydrology framework to interrogate how the Martian surface gravity affects glacial hydrology, ice sliding, and glacial erosion. Taking as reference the ancient southern circumpolar ice sheet that deposited the Dorsa Argentea formation, we compare the theoretical behavior of identical ice sheets on Mars and Earth and show that, whereas on Earth glacial drainage is predominantly inefficient, enhancing ice sliding and erosion, on Mars the lower gravity favors the formation of efficient subglacial drainage. The apparent lack of large-scale glacial fingerprints on Mars, such as drumlins or lineations, is to be expected.

Climate controls on erosion in tectonically active landscapes

The ongoing debate about the nature of coupling between climate and tectonics in mountain ranges derives, in part, from an imperfect understanding of how topography, climate, erosion, and rock uplift are interrelated. Here, we demonstrate that erosion rate is nonlinearly related to fluvial relief with a proportionality set by mean annual rainfall. These relationships can be quantified for tectonically active landscapes, and calculations based on them enable estimation of erosion where observations are lacking. Tests of the predictive power of this relationship in the Himalaya, where erosion is well constrained, affirm the value of our approach. Our model allows estimation of erosion rates in fluvial landscapes using readily available datasets, and the underlying relationship between erosion and rainfall offers the promise of a deeper understanding of how climate and tectonic evolution affect erosion and topography in space and time and of the potential influence of climate on tectonics.