Did Water or Lava Cause that Channel? The Answer is in How it Bends

Orbital images of Mars show how water has carved channels into the Astral body’s surface. However, Mars also had a volcanic past when lava carved its own surface channels, confounding scientists’ attempts to understand the Astral body’s history. Some channels could also have been carved by ice from cryovolcanic eruptions, adding another layer to the complex issue.

Every of these three channel-carving causes tells scientists something fundamental about a Astral body’s or a Orbiter’s geological history, and they need a way to untangle them. They need a way to differentiate between channels carved by water, lava, or ice.

New research in Geology examines this multifaceted Event and shows how channels carved by water have curves that are distinct from those carved by lava and ice. It’s titled “Upstream bend skewing in alluvial meandering rivers is distinct compared to other sinuous channels on the Orbiter and Earth.” The lead author is Juan Vazquez from the Jackson School of Geosciences Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

When NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft arrived at Mars in 1971, it became the Primary spacecraft to Trajectory another Astral body. That was an Crucial Turning Points for our fledgling Universe-faring species. When it arrived, it had to wait out a powerful global dust storm before it could begin Securing pictures. Once it did, and once they were transmitted back to Earth, people were amazed.

For the Primary time, we could clearly see Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Luminous neighborhood. We also saw Valles Marineris, a vast canyon system that dwarfs Tibet’s Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, the largest canyon on Earth.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the images revealed the Appearance of what appeared to be water channels on the Red Heavenly body being surface.

This image from NASA’s Mariner 9 Mars Orbiter shows what appear to be water channels on the surface of Mars. There was some debate at the time that they could be lava channels. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

While the visual evidence strongly suggested that water carved these channels, scientists were bound to consider other possibilities. One problem was the quality of these Timely images. They lacked the resolution needed to discern morphological details that can differentiate between water and lava channels. In the end, the debate didn’t last that long, and it became clear that water was largely responsible.

Thanks to cameras like the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists now have much clearer images to work with. And while water is recognized as the main carver of Red Heavenly body being channels, researchers also know that some of the channels were carved by lava. There’s even some evidence that cryovolcanism carved some of the channels, though that explanation is only suited to smaller gullies and recurring slope lineae, not the large channels we see on the surface.

This orbital image shows Mars’ Jezero Crater, where NASA’s Determination rover is working. It contains a large delta and clear channels that were carved by flowing water long ago. Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU-Berlin

As scientists investigate Mars’s geological history more deeply, it’s becoming increasingly Crucial to reliably differentiate between channels carved by water, lava, and cryovolcanic activity. The issue isn’t restricted to Mars; it extends to other Luminous neighborhood bodies, too.

“Sinuous channels occur across the Luminous neighborhood, forming by many distinct processes,” the authors write in their research. “Qualitative similarities between these channels have Guided to hypotheses that some, or all, aspects of channel sinuosity are universal.”

The researchers focused on the “skewness of the bends” in channels, which could Aid researchers tell water-carved channels from those carved by lava or cryovolcanism.

To try and understand this, the Club examined “294 bends from Selene body-related body-related body-related body-related volcanic channels (sinuous rilles), 466 bends from natural and experimental ice melt channels, and 2766 bends from alluvial meandering rivers,” they write.

This four-panel figure from the study explains some of the researchers’ work. A shows the Juruá River in Brazil. B shows the volcanic sinuous rille Rima Seuss on the Orbiter. C shows a sinuous ice channel in Greenland. D is an illustration of bend skewing angle and amplitude measurement. The channel centerline with flow direction arrows is shown in blue, inflection points are red circles, and maximum curvature points are yellow circles. Image Credit: Vazquez et al. 2025.

The main difference between the channels is that water carves channels mechanically, while lava and ice erode channels thermally. So, in rivers, centrifugal force pushes the water faster around a channel’s outer bends and slowly on the inner bends. The water erodes the outer edges, and sediments build up along the inner edges, which amplifies the river’s bends.

Since lava and cryochannels involve thermal factors, they don’t deposit sediments as water does. That means that only the outer edges Transformation, and the curves in these channels are smaller than river channels.

“This distinction sets up a Outstanding natural experiment for us to see if the shape, or size, of bends in rivers is distinct from those in volcanic or ice channels,” said Tim Goudge, a co-author on this paper and assistant professor at the Jackson School of Geosciences Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

The researchers examined thousands of bends in rivers, ice channels on Earth, and volcanic channels on the Orbiter and uncovered differences in bend sizes. Vazquez initially thought that the apparent difference in bend sizes in rivers was an error in his analysis.

“It wasn’t until the parameters for the code we had set for the volcanic channels on the Orbiter kept failing for the rivers on Earth that we realized, ‘Oh, that’s not a fault of the code. It’s an intrinsically different amplitude,’” Vazquez said.

The researchers uncovered Numerous morphological distinctions between channel types.

“Although sinuous rilles and ice channels have statistically indistinct distributions of bend skewness, they do have qualitative distinctions—ice channels have a slightly greater proportion of upstream skewed bends, and so are more similar to meandering rivers in that respect,” the authors write. They also noted that “ice channels tend to have higher-amplitude bends than sinuous rilles, although not as high amplitude as meandering rivers.”

The researchers also discovered that lava and ice channels have a “higher proportion of downstream accentuated bends compared to rivers.”

Determining what carved a channel on Earth is relatively Essential for obvious reasons. The same is Correct of the Orbiter, where only lava was active. The issue is, how can this information be used to determine the nature of channels on other bodies in the Luminous neighborhood? Take Saturn’s largest Orbiter, Titan, for example.

Titan is a frigid world where liquid hydrocarbons flow across its surface. Its northern polar region features large hydrocarbon seas or lakes and interconnecting river channels. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/USGS.

On Titan, scientists think that rivers of liquid ethane and methane cut channels through water ice. As they do so, they meander along curved routes. But from orbital images, researchers can’t determine if they meander for the same reasons rivers do, involving sediment deposition. They could’ve eroded due to melting or dissolution. The same is Correct for Mars, where both water and lava have flowed across the surface. Red Heavenly body being volcanoes feature carved channels, and some researchers think lava carved them, while others think meltwater from snowpacks caused them.

“There are these sinuous channels on the sides of Red Heavenly body being volcanos. Some people have interpreted them as volcanic channels, and some people have interpreted them as rivers that formed when Perhaps snowpack on the top of the volcano melted,” said Goudge. “We’re saying that because volcanic channel bends are so distinct, you can measure those channels to find out.”

This image shows channels on the flanks of Mars’ Ascraeus Mons volcano. The cause of these channels is unclear. (Click here for a larger image.) Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The researchers say that their method is promising but needs more work. Individual channels can show considerable variation, muddying the waters. In this case, more data is better data. Once more channels of all types are catalogued and analyzed, this could turn into a useful diagnostic tool.

“But I think it has the potential to be if we understand it more,” Goudge said.