Documentation of Recent Surface Winds on Martian Sand Dunes

Images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) are of sufficient resolution to record wind ripple patterns on the surfaces of sand dunes present across the surface of Mars. We are in the early stages of an investigation to map the ripple orientations preserved on Martian sand dunes, in order to evaluate the recent wind flow over the dunes, and compare that wind flow pattern to the winds documented over terrestrial sand dunes. HiRISE image ESP_025645_1455 covers a sand dune field on the floor of a 20-km-diameter unnamed impact crater in the Terra Cimmeria region of the southern highlands, east of the Hellas impact basin. This image is centered at 34.23 S latitude, 138.437 E longitude with 25 cm/pixel resolution, and was taken on Jan 25 of 2012 during northern spring (Ls = 57.4). Using ArcGIS, lines were drawn across three ripples perpendicular to the ripple crests, avoiding places where complex ripple patterns suggest more than one recent wind direction. The length of the lines provides a measure of ripple wavelength, and the line orientation gives azimuth (with a 180 degree absolute ambiguity). The barchan-like shape of some dunes, including occasional slip faces, suggest sand driving winds were from the southwest, although dune asymmetries indicate the wind regime likely was much more complex than a unimodal wind. Measurements of ripple orientations are being collected from dune locations across the planet, which should provide new constraints for the modeling of recent Martian winds. This work was supported by NASA MDAP grant NNX12AJ38G.