Nick Hoffman wrote:
I might place the boot on the other foot and suggest that CO2 outbursts were more reasonable on Mars, given the prevailing temperatures.

I am in the middle of an attempt to explore the situation by analysing the nature of the overbank deposits.

Alex writes:
An interesting research topic, I'll admit. I presume you are looking at the floodplains in the vicinity of the catastrophic outflow channels? The superjacent plateaus of the ancient valley networks have, as you are undoubtedly aware, shown no dissection or overflow from the fluvial valleys at the meter scale.

As for me, I am pumping for an Mars orbital SAR similar to Bruce Campbell's Mars Scout Radar proposed for the 2007 Mars Scouts opportunity or the Mars Environmental Evolution Mission proposed by Paillou et al. for lauch during the September 2009 window. I really want a C-band or L-band penetration of the dust mantles and particularly, the talus debris slopes/fields obscuring the floors (and possibly fluvial channels) of the majority of the ancient valley networks. I want to see if the meandering fluvial channel at Nenedi Vallis is atypical or not. This is similar to terrestrial work that has been done from Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) flown aboard the Space Shuttle:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radar/sircxsar/safsaf2.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radar/sircxsar/namibia.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radar/sircxsar/chad2.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radar/sircxsar/oman.html
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/PIAGenCatalogPage.pl?PIA01349

Alex R. Blackwell
University of Hawaii