SPRC Hybrid Geologic Map

The highest elevations at Mars’ south pole host a variety of ice-rich deposits, each of which serves as a distinct record of the planet’s climate. Although these deposits have been studied in great detail with data across the electromagnetic spectrum, a unified geologic framework that can connect observations across these varied datasets has remained elusive.

To make matters more difficult, exposures of water ice in and around the CO2 ice-dominated South Polar Residual Cap (SPRC) are hard to map accurately using traditional planetary geologic mapping methods. That’s why I further developed methods for hybrid geologic mapping that can fully integrate compositional information from short-wave infrared data and provide a more comprehensive view of surface geology.

Together with my collaborators, I generated a hybrid geologic map of a portion of the SPRC and used it to develop a geologic framework for the climate records found in this region. The most significant findings are those that link units and other features on the surface to subsurface structures revealed by radar, including the buried Massive CO2 Ice Deposit (MCID).