Definition
A type of landscape similar to karst.
Interpretation
The presence of exo-, endo-, and paleokarst indicates that liquid water, as solvent, and carbonate or evaporite rocks, as solutes, were available in the geologic past of the area where these karst landforms occur. If dissolution in the presence of liquid water does not seem plausible (such as in the case of Saturn’s moon, Titan), the presence of karst-like features may indicate dissolution chemistries involving other types of solutes and solvents.
Composition
On Mars, karst landforms have been proposed to occur in evaporite outcrops on the eastern Tithonium dome (ETD) and in other regions of the Valles Marineris (Baioni and Wezel 2008; Baioni et al. 2009; Wezel and Baioni 2010a, b; Baioni and Sgavetti 2012). The presence of kieserite deposits (magnesium sulfate) in these regions was confirmed by data supplied by the OMEGA spectrometer aboard the Mars Express and the Mars Exploration Rovers (Gendrin et al. 2005). Several...
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Chirienco, M. (2014). Karst-Like Landforms. In: Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_630-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_630-1
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