Geologic map of the MTM 90000 area, Planum Australe region of Mars

Published geologic maps of the south polar region of Mars, made using either Mariner 9 (Condit and Soderblom, 1978) or Viking Orbiter (Tanaka and Scott, 1987) images, identified only layered deposits and polar ice within this map area. Layered deposits probably underlie all of the other units shown on this map. The residual polar ice cap, partial frost cover, and two low-albedo units are also mapped here. These units were first recognized and mapped by Herkenhoff and Murray (1990a) at 1:2,000,000 scale using color mosaic of Viking orbiter images. This mosaic and an additional Viking color mosaic were used to confirm the identification of the five mapped color/albedo units. The colors and albedos of these units are presented in table 1 and figure 1. Because the resolution of the color mosaics is not sufficient to map these units in detail at 1:500,000 scale, contacts between them were recognized and mapped using higher resolution black and white Viking and Mariner 9 images.