Abstract
Martian gullies are landforms consisting of an erosional alcove, a
channel, and a depositional apron. A significant proportion of Martian
gullies at the mid-latitudes is active today. The seasonal sublimation
of CO2 ice has been suggested as a driver behind present-day gully
activity. However, due to a lack of in-situ observations, the actual
processes causing the observed changes remain unresolved. Here, we
present results from flume experiments in environmental chambers in
which we created CO2-driven granular flows under Martian atmospheric
conditions. Our experiments show that under Martian atmospheric
pressure, large amounts of granular material can be fluidized by the
sublimation of small quantities of CO2 ice in the granular mixture (only
0.5% of the volume fraction of the flow) under slope angles as low as
10°. Dimensionless scaling of the CO2-driven granular flows shows that
they are dynamically similar to terrestrial two-phase granular flows,
i.e. debris flows and pyroclastic flows. The similarity in flow dynamics
explains the similarity in deposit morphology with levees and lobes,
supporting the hypothesis that CO2-driven granular flows on Mars are not
merely modifying older landforms, but they are actively forming them.
This has far-reaching implications for the processes thought to have
formed these gullies over time. For other planetary bodies in our solar
system, our experimental results suggest that the existence of
gully-like landforms is not necessarily evidence for flowing liquids but
that they could also be formed or modified by sublimation-driven flow
processes.