Topographic Roughness of Hawaiian Volcanic Terrains: A Scale-Dependent Analysis of a Potential Mars Landing Site Analog

Statistics – Applications

Scientific paper

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5400 Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets, 5464 Remote Sensing, 5470 Surface Materials And Properties, 5480 Volcanism (6063, 8148, 8450), 5494 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

The roughness of a natural surface is often defined by the topography of the surface at scales of a few tens of meters or less and can be quantitatively described by self-affine, or fractal, statistics. To ensure the safety of rovers and scientific instruments on Mars, these scales are of critical importance during landing site selection and rover traverse operations. Published work on terrestrial and Martian topography datasets has demonstrated that statistical values such as the Hurst exponent can be used in conjunction with other statistical measures such as RMS slope to understand the relationship between scale-dependent roughness characteristics and the morphology of a surface. We seek to understand the effects of dataset resolution on the interpretation of various volcanic surfaces on Kilauea volcano, with applications to rover traverse navigation on remote, planetary surfaces. Extensive Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) coverage of the summit of Kilauea volcano, Hawaii, (30 cm posting, 1 m DEM, 2 cm vertical resolution) provides an opportunity for simulating higher resolution Martian topography data such as will be obtained from photoclinometry and stereo imaging using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Using the method of calculating fractal statistics described in detail by previous authors, we develop two-dimensional maps of the Hurst exponent of Martian analog flows in Hawaii to understand the effects of limited resolution topographic and imaging data on the interpretation of volcanic features on the surface of Mars. In addition to the LiDAR data, we use high resolution topographic data generated from controlled stereo imaging of volcanic surfaces within Kilauea caldera to provide a detailed view of sub-meter surface roughness of the young volcanic terrains covered by the LiDAR data. To obtain the stereo data, we moved a 12.8 mega- pixel digital camera, pointed perpendicular to the ground, along a horizontal bar mounted between two leveled tripods. We were able to collect extremely high-resolution (~1 mm resolution) stereo images of various surfaces that were subsequently transformed into several controlled, high-resolution DEMs covering ~50 cm x 4 m areas of several diverse lava surfaces that may serve as Mars analogs.

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