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Amphitheater-Headed Valley (Mars, Earth)

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms

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Definition

Valley characterized by theater-shaped alcoves.

Synonyms

Alcoved valley; Longitudinal valley; Theater-headed valley; Tributary canyon, Trunk valley (Baker 1981)

Description

Characteristic features include smooth steep-sided valley walls containing sharp wall-floor junction angles, smooth valley floors with wide U-shaped profiles, abrupt theater-like head terminations (Kochel and Howard 1985), and short stubby tributaries.

Formation/Terrestrial Analogs

There is no consensus on the formative processes of amphitheater-headed valleys on Mars. Theater-headed morphologies in unconsolidated sediments and resistant bedrock (e.g., sandstone or fractured basalt) may have different origins (Lamb et al. 2006). Possible formation mechanisms include sapping (seepage erosion), mass wasting (e.g., toppling during megafloods), and various fluvial processes from the investigations of terrestrial morphologic analogs:

  1. (1)

    Sapping: Martian amphitheater-headed valleys are apparently similar to...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physical Geography, Eötvös Loránd University, Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, 1117, Budapest, Hungary

    Gabriella Barta

  2. Department of Geography, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA

    Rene De Hon

Authors
  1. Gabriella Barta
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  2. Rene De Hon
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Correspondence to Gabriella Barta .

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Barta, G., De Hon, R. (2014). Amphitheater-Headed Valley (Mars, Earth). In: Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_327-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_327-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-9213-9

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