Longitudinal dunes on Mars: Relation to current wind regimes

Abstract

Longitudinal dunes are extremely rare on Mars, but constitute a substantial fraction of terrestrial desert dunes. We report finding isolated examples of longitudinal dunes on Mars and relate their occurrence to expected sand transport regimes. Terrestrial longitudinal dunes form in bimodal and multimodal transport regimes. General circulation models and streak data indicate that bimodal and multimodal transport of sand should be very rare on Mars. Thus the dearth of longitudinal dunes on Mars is consistent with their apparent formation conditions on Earth.