Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Sep 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.2106m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #21.06
Mathematics
Logic
Scientific paper
As we have previously hypothesized, Titan's interior may be endogenically inactive. Those landforms on Titan that are unambiguously identifiable can be explained by exogenic processes (aeolian, fluvial, impact cratering, and mass wasting). At the scale of available imaging data, the surface is dominated by aeolian and fluvial erosion, transportation, and deposition. Here we report on our initial effort to directly address the recognizability of endogenic landforms subjected to Titan's weather by employing computer simulation of long-term landform evolution principally from fluvial activity. We use a landform evolution model to simulate fluvial and lacustrine modification of icy satellite landscapes to evaluate whether fluvial erosion of representative initial landscapes can replicate the present Titan landscape. The icy Galilean satellites are representative of at least a subset of geologically reasonable initial landscapes: 1. Severely tectonized terrain (Europa); 2. A mixture of endogenic belts and zones with blocks of older cratered terrain (Ganymede); and 3. A landscape completely dominated by cratering (Callisto prior to the sublimation-erosion). Questions being addressed include: To what degree can the formative processes and morphology of an initial endogenic or cratered landscape be inferred after sufficient modification by fluvial erosion as to resemble Titan's surface? How much erosion would have had to occur to make inferences about the nature of the initial landscape impossible? Our goal is to determine the existence and recognizability of endogenic processes on Titan, the relative dominance and nature of fluvial activity over the landscape, the expression and rates of landform erosion and sediment redistribution, and the specific morphological expressions of modified endogenic landforms.
Howard Alan D.
Moore Jeffrey M.
Pappalardo Robert T.
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