Overview
- Gives a widespread and comprehensive overview of the different types of planetary surface features, including their formation and evolution
- Covers all solid-surface planetary bodies and moons in the Solar System, in an alphabetical approach
- Includes original figures, line drawings, annotated photomosaics, and the latest spacecraft images, thematic, and distribution maps
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Table of contents (612 entries)
About this book
More than 600 named planetary feature types are discussed in the encyclopedia, covering a wide range of scales--from micrometers to global scale--and also include landform types (structural or topographic features), parts of landforms, terrain types or surface textures, surface patterns, and features identified at wavelengths extending from visible to radio waves (e.g., albedo, thermal infrared, and radar features). The book covers features formed by impact, aeolian, magmatic, volcanic, tectonic, fluvial, lacustrine, marine and coastal, mass movement, sedimentary, desiccation, liquefaction, periglacial, glacial, nival, sublimation, collapse, weathering, and selective erosion or other, including complex processes.
Depending on the information and formation models available, the entries have different approaches. Some of them discuss their subject from the point of view of the inferred process or origin, others are morphology or description-based. As a default, entries focus on extraterrestrial landforms, while also mentioning their proposed terrestrial analogs. Most planetary landforms are not body-specific, but some have no known terrestrial counterparts. Named historic (obsolete) landform types are also included to provide reference for previous key research papers.
To make it easier to find features with related origins, the encyclopedia contains entries that list landforms based on their formative processes. It also lists body-specific features on Mercury (5 feature types), Venus (40), the Earth (13), the Moon (15), Mars (87), Io (7), Europa (17), Callisto (7), Titan (9), Triton (2), mid-sized satellites (8), and small bodies (3). Also included are entries on the 51 planetary feature descriptor terms approved by IAU.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Ákos Kereszturi (Ph.D.) is a geologist, working on planetary science and astrobiology as researcher at the Research Center for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, where he leads the Astrophysical and Geochemical Laboratory. He is member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute TDE Focus Group, teaches planetary science at Eötvös Loránd University, serves on the editorial board of two international and one national journals, is vice president of the Hungarian
Astronomical Association, and contributes in the popularization activity of the Polaris Observatory in Budapest. His main research area is the geology of Mars, Europa satellite, craters of Mercury, water in the Solar System and beyond, Mars analog field work, survival of extremophile organisms, analysis of asteroid surfaces, and geological history based on mineral characteristics of meteorites.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms
Editors: Henrik Hargitai, Ákos Kereszturi
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9
Publisher: Springer New York, NY
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Earth and Environm. Science, Reference Module Physical and Materials Science, Reference Module Earth and Environmental Sciences
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4614-9213-9
Number of Pages: 1100
Number of Illustrations: 220 b/w illustrations, 10 illustrations in colour
Topics: Planetology, Geographical Information Systems/Cartography, Space Sciences (including Extraterrestrial Physics, Space Exploration and Astronautics), Geoecology/Natural Processes