Environmental Futures Seminar - Dr Claire Orlov

As a world without plate tectonics, Mars has a fundamentally different geological setting to Earth, and yet we observe many familiar structural features at the surface. Mars is also home to the largest volcanoes in the Solar System, which are the spectacular surface expressions of an enormous, long-lived magmatic system underlying the region known as Tharsis. The many surface structures in the Tharsis region are an important record of the geologic and volcanic history of Mars. They can provide insight into the timing and nature of volcanic systems, which is important to investigations of past climate and potential habitability. This talk will explore how volcanism has driven formation of the structures we see on the surface of Mars and how this can help us answer important questions about the evolution of the red planet.

Dr Claire Orlov is a geologist and recently appointed lecturer at the University of Wollongong. She has worked across a range of geoscience disciplines in both academia and at Geoscience Australia, including mineral and petroleum resources, groundwater, and planetary geology. Her current research is focused on the tectonics of other planets and using surface structural mapping as a key tool to piece together the evolution of terrestrial bodies. Given the distinct lack of current fieldwork opportunities on Mars, Claire’s work relies on the analysis of high-resolution remote sensing data collected by orbiter spacecraft, as well as investigations of analogous structures on Earth.