Hydro-Morphodynamic Delta Modelling for Future Exploration Insights at Oxia Planum, Mars
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch the Rosalind Franklin rover in 2028. The aim of this mission is to search for biosignatures and to investigate Oxia Planum (Altieri et al., 2023). This landing site was chosen because it is one of the oldest Noachian terrains (4-3.6 Ga) altered by water, yet logistically feasible for landing and roving. Oxia Planum is rich in clays, hydrated minerals, suggesting the past influence of liquid water (Mandon et al., 2021). A river delta has been identified close to the landing site at the termination of Coogoon Vallis (Quantin-Nataf et al., 2021). The delta presents potential for preserving biosignatures either by covering underlying clays or in within its own deposits, providing protection from radiation and oxidation. Despite knowing that water played an important role at Oxia Planum, it is still unclear what the past fluvial and environmental conditions were like.Deltas on Mars are important targets for planetary exploration due to their indicators of past fluvial activity, contain a sedimentary record available to study, and have potential for preserving past signs of life. The observable delta deposits, captured by satellite and rover imagery, serve as key sources for deducing ancient fluvial and climatic conditions on Mars (e.g. Salese et al., 2020; Toffoli et al., 2021; Mangold et al., 2021). This study will use the observed river delta at Oxia Planum to investigate past fluvial and environmental conditions at the landing site. Specifically, this study aims to constrain the range of possible hydrological conditions in terms of duration of activity, flow energy conditions and water levels. These insights contribute to the strategic planning of the rover mission, aiding in the identification of drilling locations of interest.To investigate the Oxia Planum delta, we developed a 2D-horizontal hydro-morphological model. We used the numerical modelling software package Delft3D FM (by Deltares), which was amended for Martian gravity. We explored multiple scenarios including, different water levels in the basin, river discharges, sediment supply rates and grain sizes. Some scenarios aimed to replicate the final phase of delta activity, while others sought to reconstruct the evolution of older delta lobes. Although the preliminary results are subject to ongoing investigation, they hold promise for refining estimates (both lower and upper bounds) of fluvial conditions such as discharge, water level, sediment transport rates, morphological development, and duration of activity. Given the distinct sediment transport dynamics on Mars due to lower gravity (Braat et al., 2023), reliance on investigative modelling becomes imperative, as the direct use of Earth analogues is challenging.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".