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K. E. Herkenhoff

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Published geologic maps of south polar region of Mars have been based on either Mariner 9 (Condit Soderblom, 1978; Scott and Carr, 1978) or Viking Orbiter (Tanaka and Scott, 1987) images. The mapped extent of the southern layered deposits differs in many places on these maps and on our maps. These differences reflect the difficulty in accurately determining the location of the contact between the layered deposits and subjacent units. The polar layered deposit gradually thin toward their margin in many places, and the smooth surface features that characterize the layered deposits are also found on other sedimentary blankets in the south polar region (Murray and others, 1972; Sharp, 1973).
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The area shown on this map includes layered polar deposits and residual polar ice, as well as some exposures of older terrain. Howard and others (1982) noted that an area (at lat 84.8 S., long 356 W.) near a 23-km diameter impact crater (Plaut and others, 1988) appears to have undergone recent deposition, as evidenced by the partial burial of secondary craters. Herkenhoff and Murray (1990a) mapped this area as a mixture of frost and defrosted ground and suggested that the presence of frost throughout the year stabilizes dust deposited in this area. This quadrangle was mapped using high-resolution Mariner 9 (table 1) and Viking Orbiter images in order to study the relations among erosional, cratering, and depositional...
The polar deposits on Mars are of great interest because they probably record martian climate variations (Thomas and others, 1992). The area shown on this map includes polar layered deposits with distinct low-albedo features and a sharp boundary between the layered deposits and the moderately cratered unit that forms the floor of Chasma Australe. Detailed mapping of this quadrangle was undertaken to further investigate the geologic relations between the albedo features and the layered deposits and to better constrain the recent geologic history of the south polar region. Dark dunes in the north polar region appear to be derived from erosion of the layered deposits, but the source of dark material in the south polar...
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