| Kelin Whipple | Arjun Heimsath | Ramón Arrowsmith | Mark Schmeeckle | Enrique Vivoni |
The Earth Surface Processes Seminar (called "Geomorphology Seminar" in the GLG courses list) runs every term, for one unit credit (repeatable any number of times, and we prefer students do enroll) on a different theme each term. The theme for this term's focus is "Planetary Geomorphology". We will focus on the evolution of surface characteristics of the terrestrial planets and moons, placing particular emphasis on process.
To accommodate the interdisciplinary group interested in our Planetary Geomorphology theme, meetings will be held on either Thursday evenings, 7-9pm, at rotating home locations announced each week, or will take the place of the usual Planetary Seminar on Fridays, at 3pm in the Moeur Auditorium. A calendar of meeting days, topics, and papers will be posted weekly below. During our usual Thursday meetings, BEvERages and snacks/desert will normally be available and pot-luck contributions are always welcome. Although first time participants often chafe at the notion of an evening seminar off campus, experience has shown this is very conducive to a great, and enjoyable, learning experience for all that participate.
In a typical session we discuss a single research paper or two short ones. One or a pair of students have the charge to lead the discussion each session. Guiding a discussion, pointing out interesting angles to discuss and keeping the discussion on track are the main tasks. Usually this involves leading the group through the paper, but with an aim to highlighting discussion points rather than a report/summary of all points. Sometimes digging up essential background material from previous papers is essential to either understanding of the paper, or for drawing out key discussion points. Determining whether such ancillary material is needed is up to the student leaders. As always, input for specific topics/papers folks would like to cover are greatly appreciated!
We're looking forward to a vibrant set of discussions this semester and a strengthening of ties between the planetary and surface processes groups. Encouragement from Arjun and Ramón.
| Date and location | Discussion Leader(s) | Reading/topic |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, January 20th; 3pm Moeur Auditorium | Matt Rossi and Lauren Puglisi | We've decided to postpone the topic of deltas until next week in lieu of a more broad topic that will hopefully spark some good discussion about different approaches to planetary surface process questions. Perron, et al., Evidence for an ancient Martian ocean in the topography of deformed shorelines, Nature 2007 |
| Thursday, January 26; at Kelin Whipple's house: 235 E Dawn Drive Tempe |
Becky Smith and Scott Robinson | We'll be reading two papers this week focusing on the fan delta located within Eberswalde Crater (formerly Holden Northeast Crater): |
| Thursday, February 2nd; at Barrett Salisbury's house: 419 E Julie Dr. Tempe 85283 |
Barrett Salisbury | We'll be following up on last week's reading with a couple papers focused on formation time: |
| Friday, February 10th; 3pm Moeur Auditorium | Andy Ryan and Marina Bravo Foster | We decided in session last week that we wanted to compare a moon & a mars paper and that we wanted to look at a different process (rather than water) for formation of some of these landscape features: lava erosion. After reviewing a number of papers, we decided to extend this topic to take place over the next couple weeks and will be saving our lunar paper (Williams/Fagents/Greeley paper about the roles of thermal/mechanical erosion in the creation of sinuous rilles on the moon) for next week. To kick off our volcanic incision discussions, we'll be reading the following two papers for discussion this week:
The first paper attached - Leverington 2007 - looks at the Mangala Valles system and discusses possible volcanic evidence for its formation. The second paper is by Jaeger et al., entitled "Emplacement of the youngest flood lava on Mars: A short, turbulent story" and discusses Athabasca Valles volcanism. |
| Thursday, February 16th; at Loyc Vanderkluysen's house: 910 North Bradley Drive Chandler, AZ 85226 (just south of Kelin's house) |
Andy Darling and Drew Enns | Williams et al, 2000 (hot lava, erosion, and lunar rilles) and we will stick to just the one paper this week, however it is often good to hark back to earlier papers to make connections. |
| Friday, February 24th; 3pm Moeur Auditorium | Allie Rutledge and Byron Adams |
Note from Allie: |
| Thurs-Friday, March 1-2 | n/a |
There will be no planetary geomorph seminar this week due to SESE grad recruitment activities. |
| Thursday, March 8; at Kelin Whipple's house: 235 E Dawn Drive Tempe |
Mark Adams and Matt Jungers | This week's geomorphology seminar topic will be Mars Landslides (in V. Marineris). We will discuss the two short papers attached, below. There are many interesting background/related papers, especially on the topic of what composes the walls of V. Marineris. Hopefully the martians in the group will help fill in this background and provide the group leaders with a couple key images/figures. Next week we will probably follow up with ideas about salt tectonics (that is linked to these landslide papers, as you will see). |
| Thursday, March 15th & 22nd | n/a | Spring Break - no seminar. |
| Thursday, March 29th; at Phil Christensen's house, 2075 E. Ranch Rd, Tempe | Scott Robinson and Drew Enns | We'll continue our discussion on mass wasting processes with two papers (Adams, 2009; DeBlasio, 2011), downloadable below, plus Quantin 04 for background - photos and topo sections.
Adams_etal_hebes_chasma_salt_tectonics_geol.pdf |
| Thursday, April 5th ; at Phil Christensen's house, 2075 E. Ranch Rd, Tempe | Erin DiMaggio, Alka, Kristen | We'll continue our discussion on salt tectonics and outwash channels with two Montgomery papers, downloadable below.
Montgomery_etal_SaltTectonicsOutflowChannels_2009.pdf |
| Thursday, April 12th ; | Seminar cancelled | |
| Friday, April 20th; 3pm Moeur Auditorium | Andy Darling and TBA |
The latest NRC Decadal Survey outlines the goals for the next ten years of planetary exploration as decided on by the community. It's a dense document, but a few chapters in particular apply to Mars/Moon/outer moons surface processes: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/downloads/Vision_and_Voyages-FINAL1.pdf The "Science Goals" sections of Chapters 5 (terrestrial planets), 6 (Mars), and 8 (outer moons - i.e. Titan, Europa) would be most useful for our purposes. The "Determine the Evolution of Surface and Interior" section of Chapter 6 is most applicable to Mars surface processes. The Mars geologic timescale is defined in this section.
A "Mars Fact Sheet" I've found extremely useful to keep on hand while reading Martian papers
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html
ASU's Red Planet page - a biweekly blog style summary of recent interesting finds on Mars. It summarizes one or more papers a week, links to the original journal article, and highlights various processes on Mars. It's written for the layperson, but is a great first look at some really interesting Mars results.
The Planetary Geomorphology Image of the Day (this month is glaciers!):
http://www.psi.edu/pgwg/images/Feb12Image.html
Past images are at:
http://www.psi.edu/pgwg/images/index.html
GLG 591 Geomorphology Seminar Spring 2012 - Course #18293