Paleolake Deposits on Mars Might Look Like Sediments in Indonesia

Figure 1 from Goudge et al. Lake Towuti, Indonesia. (A) Regional context for Lake Towuti on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Red box indicates approximate location of part B. Background is the Ocean base map from ESRI et al. (2015). (B) Generalized geologic map of Lake Towuti and the surrounding area showing the dominance of ultramafic material. Map is modified from Costa et al. (2015). (C) Bathymetry of Lake Towuti showing the location of the two analyzed sediment cores at the distal margins of the Mahalona River delta (white dots labeled 4 for TOW4 and 5 for TOW5). River inputs are shown in thin blue lines, with the Mahalona River shown as a thick blue line.

Credit: GSA

Interestingly, Goudge and colleagues also suggest that paleolake deposits on Mars should preserve similar paleoenvironmental information that could be accessed through remote sensing studies of stratigraphy and VNIR reflectance spectroscopy.

Lead author Tim Goudge says, “The major link between this study of lake sediment in Indonesia and lake deposits on Mars is in terms of the methods we used. We can differentiate material properties with color (e.g., rust is red because of the iron in it), so VNIR spectroscopy allows us to determine what minerals are within a sample of lake sediment.”

While this technique is relatively new for applying to lake deposits on Earth, it can be run remotely simply using reflected sunlight. Thus it is commonly employed to study the mineralogy and composition of the surface of other planetary bodies, including Mars.

Goudge says, “Our study shows that one can use VNIR spectroscopy to understand the evolution of past climate that is recorded by lake sediment. Therefore, we propose that applying a similar approach to studying ancient lake deposits on Mars at high resolution will help to unravel the history of ancient martian climate.”

Lake Towuti is also contained within an ophiolite, which is composed of very iron- and magnesium-rich (mafic) rocks, and so is more comparable to the mafic surface of Mars than much of Earth’s land surface, which is commonly more felsic (richer in silicon, aluminum, sodium, etc.). The compositional link is not perfect, however, so Goudge and colleagues more heavily emphasize the applicability of the technique.
 

Contacts and sources:

Kea Giles

Geological Society of America (GSA)