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GIS Used To Catalog And Map The Mars Landscape


     For Immediate Release: 27 May 1998

     Contact: Pat Jorgenson
     pjorgenson@usgs.gov
     650-329-4000
     United States Geological Survey

     GIS Used To Catalog And Map The Mars Landscape

     Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the tool of choice of modern
     geographers to map natural and man-made features on the earth's
     surface, is also being used to depict the surface of Mars,
     according to astrogeologists with the U.S. Geological Survey.

     Speaking to the spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union
     (AGU) in Boston, today (May 27), Kenneth Tanaka told fellow
     scientists how he and his colleagues at the USGS in Flagstaff,
     Ariz., are using NASA's Viking images and GIS techniques to
     investigate the origin of ancient river valleys on Mars and to map
     impact craters, faults and volcanoes on the Red Planet's surface.

     Just as GIS enables geographers to manipulate terrain,
     infrastructure and population data to produce maps useful to
     earthbound land-use planners, the data fed into the Mars GIS has
     enabled Tanaka and his colleagues to conclude that on early Mars,
     when geothermal activity was high, impacts, volcanic and intrusive
     activity led to valley formation, presumably due to vigorous
     hydrothermal circulation of ground water and possible melting of
     local snow packs. More recently formed near three younger impact
     craters, where impact shaking may have forced water to erupt onto
     the surface from beneath the kilometers-deep zone of Mars
     permafrost.

     Tanaka said he envisions many other geologic applications of
     planetary data using GIS, and that the next step will be to build
     a planetary GIS database with user-friendly analysis tools that
     can be accessed by the scientific community, via the Internet.

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