Main Results:
1) We believe that cold-based glaciers on Mars
exist on the north-western flanks of Tharsis
volcanoes because of a possible Martian orographic
effect and current morphologic features in
those regions. In our image from the western
flanks of Pavonis Mons, it appears that hummocky
terrain has been found. We believe this terrain
formed when an ash-rich cold based glacier
sublimated away, leaving the hummocks or knobby terrain.
2) In our environmental chamber model, the uneven sublimation of CO2 ice under a blanket of
Mars soil simulant caused hummocky terrain to
form. On Mars, cold-based glaciers exist
underneath Martian dust which acts like an insulator.
This prevents rapid sublimation into the thin
Martian atmosphere. In our experiment we reduced
the pressure in the experimental tank to model
the effects of the thin atmosphere on sublimating
ice with a coating of soil. Perhaps volcanic ash on
the western flanks of Tharsis volcanoes acts like an insulator for cold-based glaciers preventing
rapid sublimation into the atmosphere. While we
used CO2 ice in our experiment, it is also possible
that the cold based glaciers on Mars are water
ice, as clouds of water vapor have been observed on
the north-west flanks of Tharsis region volcanoes.
3) It is more likely that the hummocky terrain was
formed from sublimating cold-based glaciers
rather than volcanic activity because it only
exists on the western flanks of the Tharsis volcanoes.
If these hummocks were volcanic, one would expect
a random distribution of these terrains about the
base of the Tharsis volcanoes. However, this is
not the case. The distributions of the hummocks
appear only in the region where orographic cloud
formation on Martian volcanoes has been observed.
Final Presentation
