Martian Impact Craters

Our exploration of Mars has revealed a world as fascinating as Earth, with a changing climate, giant volcanoes, former oceans, polar ice caps, and numerous impact craters. This book provides a comprehensive summary of the morphology and distribution of meteorite craters on Mars, and the wealth of information these can provide on the crustal structure, surface geology, climate and evolution of the planet. The chapters present highly illustrated case studies of landforms associated with impact craters to highlight their morphological diversity, using high-resolution images and topographic data to compare these features with those on other bodies in the Solar System. Including research questions to inspire future work, this book will be valuable for researchers and graduate students interested in impact craters (both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial) and Mars geology, as well as planetary geologists, planetary climatologists and astrobiologists.

• Offers an extensive bibliography that guides the reader through over 60 years of research into impact craters on the Red Planet
• Presents the first book-length examination of crater morphology on Mars, including the first detailed published description of how water or ice may affect the cratering process as a function of time and location on the planet
• Describes how details of former environments and the geologic history of Mars can be teased out of the present-day landscape through a consideration of the influence of climate change and former oceans on the planet