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Dust Devil Track

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Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms

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Definition

Linear, meandering, cycloidal, or looping albedo features found on Earth and Mars that are clearly superposed on the terrain and represent the passage of an atmospheric vortex with entrained dust (the dust devil) (Balme et al. 2003).

Category

A type of variable feature (Albedo Feature)

Synonyms

Dark filamentary marking (obsolete) (Veverka 1976)

Description

Dust devil tracks are linear and curvilinear elongated albedo features (narrow streaks) 10–200 m across on Mars and a few tens of meter across on Earth, often crossing each other and a range of terrain and surface types, sometimes looping back on themselves (Edgett and Malin 2000; Fig. 1). Dust devil tracks can be darker or brighter (relatively rare) (Raack et al. 2011) than the surrounding regions depending on the formation process.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Different dust devil track morphologies: (a) curved dust devil tracks HiRISE ESP_023327_2065 at 26.1°N, 57.0°E, (b) linear dust devil tracks MOC E10-00879 at 59.1°S 270.3°W, (c) wide...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Planetary Science Research Group, Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    Henrik Hargitai

  2. Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Mato Grosso, Zulmira Canavarros 93, 78005-200, Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, Brazil

    Thiago Statella

Authors
  1. Henrik Hargitai
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  2. Thiago Statella
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Correspondence to Henrik Hargitai .

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Hargitai, H., Statella, T. (2014). Dust Devil Track. In: Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_131-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_131-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-9213-9

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