REASSESSING THE PROPOSED ARABIA SHORELINE NEAR APOLLINARIS PATERA AND GUSEV CRATER

THermal EMission Imaging System visible (THEMIS) imagery is used together with Mars Orbital Camera (MOC) and Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) datasets to help expound the possibility of shorelines around Apollinaris Patera and Gusev Crater, to the south. Specifically, we are addressing the Arabia shoreline as proposed by Clifford and Parker, 2001. A high-resolution base map, compiled in Adobe Illustrator, employed THEMIS, Context (CTX), AND MOC imagery to recreate a portion of the proposed Arabia shoreline. The MOLA raw-topography datasets were arranged in the Microsoft Excel program to recreate the topography of multiple areas and then compared to the elevation plots in the JMARS program. Our initial results give no indication of visible shorelines in or around the area of interest. This is not to say that there was never an ocean in the vicinity of Apollinaris Patera, but if did its signature must manifest itself in a form other than a shoreline. Future research could prove to be beneficial by implementing the CRISM and OMEGA datasets, to establish possible aqueous minerals, in places of interest with respect to proposed shorelines. Ground penetrating radar could prove to be significant, as well, to ascertain depositional patterns common to marine or lacustrine environments.