The floor of Mars is suffering from examples of glacier-like landforms. While floor ice deposits are largely restricted to the polar caps, patterns of gradual, viscous movement abound in lots of non-polar areas of Mars.

Streamlines that seem as linear ridges within the floor soils and rocky particles are sometimes uncovered on prime of infilling deposits that coat crater and valley flooring. We see such patterns on the surfaces of Earth’s icy glaciers and debris-covered “rock glaciers.” As ice flows downhill, rock and soil are plucked from the encompassing panorama and ferried alongside the flowing ice floor and throughout the icy subsurface. While this course of is gradual, taking maybe hundreds of years or longer, it creates a community of linear patterns that reveal the historical past of ice movement.

Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona

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