Estimates of fluvial erosion on Titan from sinuosity of lake shorelines
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Perron_Estimates of fluvial.pdf
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Author(s)
Tewelde, Yodit
Perron, J. Taylor
Miller, Scott
Ford, Peter Gerald
Black, Benjamin Alexander
Date Issued
October 2013
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Tewelde, Yodit, J. Taylor Perron, Peter Ford, Scott Miller, and Benjamin Black. “Estimates of Fluvial Erosion on Titan from Sinuosity of Lake Shorelines.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 118, no. 10 (October 2013): 2198–2212. Copyright © 2013 American Geophysical Union
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Final published version
Abstract
Titan has few impact craters, suggesting that its surface is geologically young. Titan's surface also has abundant landforms interpreted to be fluvial networks. Here we evaluate whether fluvial erosion has caused significant resurfacing by estimating the cumulative erosion around the margins of polar lakes. A scarcity of detailed topographic data makes it difficult to measure fluvial incision on Titan, but images of drowned fluvial features around the lake margins, where elevated levels of hydrocarbon liquids appear to have partly flooded fluvial valleys, offer a constraint on the topography. We mapped the shorelines of several lakes to obtain topographic contours that trace the fluvially dissected topography. We then used a numerical landscape evolution model to calibrate a relationship between contour sinuosity, which reflects the extent of fluvial valley incision, and cumulative erosion. We confirmed this relationship by analyzing a partially dissected surface adjacent to the Minnesota River, USA. Comparison of the mapped Titan contours with the sinuosity-erosion relationship suggests that cumulative fluvial erosion around the margins of Titan's polar lakes, including Ligeia Mare, Kraken Mare, and Punga Mare in the north and Ontario Lacus in the south, ranges from 4% to 31% of the initial relief. Additional model simulations show that this amount of fluvial erosion does not render craters invisible at the resolution of currently available imagery, suggesting that fluvial erosion is not the only major resurfacing mechanism operating in Titan's polar regions.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1002/jgre.20153
