Streaks on martian slopes are dry

Valentin Tertius Bickel () and Adomas Valantinas
Additional contact information
Valentin Tertius Bickel: University of Bern
Adomas Valantinas: Brown University

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Abstract Slope streaks are dark albedo features on martian slopes that form spontaneously and fade over years to decades. Along with seasonally recurring slope lineae, streak formation has been attributed to aqueous processes, implying the presence of transient yet substantial amounts of liquid water or brines on Mars’ surface, with important implications for present-day Mars’ habitability. Here, we use a deep learning-enabled approach to create the first consistent, global catalog of half a million individual slope streaks. We show that slope streaks modify less than 0.1% of the martian surface, but transport several global storm equivalents of dust per Mars year, potentially playing a major role in the martian dust cycle. Our global geostatistical analysis challenges wet streak formation models and instead supports dry streak formation, driven by seasonal dust delivery and energetic triggers like wind and meteoritic impacts. We further identify a qualitative, spatiotemporal relation between recurring slope lineae formation, seasonal dust deposition, and dust devil activity. Our findings suggest that modern Mars’ slopes do not commonly experience transient flows of water or brines, implying that streak bearing terrain can be explored without raising planetary protection concerns.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59395-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-59395-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59395-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().