Erosion rate of the north polar steep scarps on Mars

Mass wasting activity, in the form of ice block falls, has been observed as the main erosion process at steep scarps of the North Polar Layered Deposits (NPLD) [1,2]. Our study focuses on leveraging a state-of-the-art deep learning technique to map the sources of such events throughout the entire NPLD region. By quantifying water ice loss, we derive the current erosion and retreat rate for each active NPLD scarp. We notice that these scarps have varying degrees of erosion, from less than 0.01 up to 0.88 m3 per Mars Year per meter along the scarp. The current most active scarp shows a retreat rate of ~6 mm per Mars Year. We want to compare our results to the detected ice block falls at the underlying Basal Unit (BU) region [3], to understand the difference between the two units’ geological processes, and help to constitute important constraints to the present-day mass flux of the north polar region. References[1] Herkenhof et al., 2007. Science, 317(5845), pp.1711-1715.[2] Dundas et al., 2021. J. Geophys. Res. Planets, 126(8), p.e2021JE006876.[3] Martynchuk, et al., 2023. AGU23, 11-15 Dec.