Possible crater-based pingos, paleolakes and periglacial landscapes at the high latitudes of Utopia Planitia, Mars

Closed-system pingos (CSPs) are perennial ice-cored mounds that evolve in relatively deep and continuous permafrost. They occur where thermokarst lakes either have lost or are losing their water by drainage or evaporation and by means of freeze-thaw cycling, permafrost aggradation and pore-water migration. The presence of CSPs on Mars, particularly on late-Amazonian Epoch terrain at near-polar latitudes, would indicate: (1) the antecedent occurrence of ponded water at the mound-formation sites; (2) freeze-thaw cycling of this water; and (3) boundary-conditions of pressure and temperature at or above the triple point of water much more recently and further to the north than has been thought possible.In 2005 we studied two crater-floor landscapes in northern Utopia Planitia and used MOC narrow-angle images to describe mounds within these landscapes that shared a suite of geological characteristics with CSPs on Earth. Here, we show the results of a circum-global search for similar crater-floor landscapes at latitudes 55°N. The search incorporates all relevant MOC and HiRISE images released since 2005. In addition to the two periglacially suggestive crater-floor landscapes observed by us earlier, we have identified three other crater floors with similar landscapes. Interestingly, each of the five mound-bearing craters occur within a tight latitudinal-band (~64-69°N); this could be a marker of periglacial landscape-modification on a regional scale.Just to the north of the crater-based pingo-like mounds Conway et al. have identified large (km-scale) crater-based perennial ice-domes. They propose that the ice domes develop when regional polar-winds transport and precipitate icy material onto the floor of their host craters. Under a slightly different obliquity-solution ice domes could have accumulated at the lower latitudes where the putative CSPs have been observed. Subsequently, were temperatures to have migrated close to or at 0°C the ice domes could have thawed, forming endogenic paleolakes. This region also contains a significant concentration of crater-floor polygons. The polygons are thought to have formed by desiccation (El Maarry et al. 2010. J. Geophys. Res., 115 (E10006)) or thermal contraction (Soare et al. 2005a. Icarus, 174 (373-382)); on Earth each of these processes is associated with the end-stage of lake evolution.On the basis of our enhanced image collection, a new map displaying the global distribution of mound-bearing craters and a two new digital-elevation models of a crater-floor with pingo-like mounds, we evaluate the CSP hypothesis anew. We also explore two alternative hypotheses: (1) the mounds are weathered central-uplift complexes; or (2) they are impact-related hydrothermal structures. However, we propose that the CSP hypothesis is much more robust than these alternatives, encompassing geomorphological, cartographical, stratigraphical and climatological observations, and less subject to inconsistencies. © 2012 Elsevier Inc