P072-03
Geomorphological map of the South Belet Region of Titan

Tuesday, 15 December 2020: 11:38
Virtual
Ashley Schoenfeld1, Rosaly M C Lopes2, Michael Malaska2, Anezina Solomonidou3, David A Williams4, Samuel Birch5, Alexander Hayes6, Paul Corlies7, Alice Anne Le Gall8, Michael A Janssen9, Stephane Le Mouelic10, Elizabeth P Turtle11, Meghan Florence12 and Tiffany Verlander13, (1)University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (2)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (3)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (4)Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States, (5)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (6)Cornell University, Department of Astronomy, Ithaca, NY, United States, (7)Cornell, Department of Astronomy, Ithaca, NY, United States, (8)LATMOS Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales, Guyancourt, France, (9)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (10)LPGN Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique de Nantes, Nantes Cedex 03, France, (11)JHU Applied Physics Lab., Laurel, MD, United States, (12)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, United States, (13)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
We carried out mapping of Titan’s South Belet region, which spans the equatorial and mid-latitude region of the moon’s southern hemisphere. This mapping work is a continuation of the detailed global mapping effort introduced in Malaska et al. (2016a) and continued on in Lopes et al. (2020). We used Cassini’s Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data as our basemap, supplemented by other datasets, following the procedure described in Malaska et al. (2016a) for the Afekan Crater region; hence the four major terrain classes are: craters, hummocky/mountainous, plains, and dunes. Each terrain class was further subdivided into terrain units by characteristic morphology, including border shape, texture, and general appearance; and radar backscatter which is broadly classified as “high”, “medium”, “low”, and in some cases as “variable”. There are two terrain units that were not included in previous studies but were identified in our mapping of South Belet: “bright alluvial plains” and “pitted hummocky”. Our mapping shows that plains are the dominant class of terrain unit in South Belet, comprising ~ 47.0% of the mapped area. Unlike the Afekan Crater region, the areal extent of the dunes closely rivals the dominance of plains, making up 43.0% of the mapped area. The next most widespread unit by area in the region following the dunes are the mountains/hummocky terrains (10.0%), and finally, crater terrains (0.01%). The introduction of two new units, “bright alluvial plains” and “pitted hummocky”, are necessary to capture the full range of morphologies seen in South Belet. However, analysis of our geomorphological mapping results for South Belet is consistent with the narrative of Titan’s equatorial and mid-latitudes being dominated by organic materials that have been deposited and emplaced by aeolian activity. This is similarly to the conclusion we arrived at through our mapping and analysis of the Afekan region. Lastly, the applicability of the terrain units from our mapping of the Afekan region to our mapping of South Belet suggests latitudinal symmetry in Titan’s surface processes and their evolution.
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