Could Exhumed Channel Belts on Mars Be Used to Reconstruct Structural Tilt? Numerical Experiments Using 3D Seismic Volumes from the US Gulf Coast

Fluvial ridges are landforms on Mars associated with the exhumation of fluvial channel belts. Because fluvial ridges are exposures of fluvial channel belts, these landforms can be used to reconstruct many aspects of environmental history on Mars. It has been suggested that their longitudinal topographic profiles may be useful proxies for measuring structural deformation, but it has also been argued that erosion may instead be the primary control on ridge topography, obscuring tilting. Here, we used a landscape evolution model to erode fluvial stratigraphy imaged in a 3D seismic reflectance volume of the subsurface US Gulf Coast. The model produces landscapes with fluvial ridges by setting local erosion rates to be a function of lithology, represented by a seismic attribute, and local topographic curvature. We numerically tilted the stratigraphy towards different directions at varying magnitudes, eroded the tilted stratigraphy to produce fluvial ridges, and measured fluvial ridge longitudinal topographic profiles. We will present results comparing the measured fluvial ridge profiles with the magnitude and direction of the imposed tilt.