Abstract
Deep Martian aquifers harboring liquid water could hold vital insights
for current and past habitability. We show that with seismo-electric
interface responses (IRs) we can quantitatively characterize subsurface
water on Mars. Full-waveform simulations and sensitivity analyses across
diverse Martian aquifer scenarios demonstrate the technique’s
effectiveness. In contrast to how seismo-electric signals often appear
on Earth, Mars’ desiccated surface naturally removes co-seismic fields
and exposes useful IRs that allow us to characterize several aquifer
properties. Changing the aquifer depth, thickness, or quantity changes
the IR arrival times or shape: aquifer depth is a strong control on
evanescent IRs, thickness affects the relative timing of IRs, and
increasing the number of aquifers introduces more dipole sources to the
waveform. Other factors, such as aquifer saturation, chemistry, and
salinity, strongly affect IR amplitude but have minimal or no effect on
waveform shape. Notably, for a deep low-porosity aquifer, the salinity
and brine chemistry (perchlorate versus chloride) are the strongest
controls on signal amplitude. Analyzing the effects of epicentral
distance shows that radiating and evanescent IRs separate at large
source-receiver offset, allowing analyses of both signals and accurate
event distance derivation. From this numerical investigation of the
sensitivity of IRs to deep Martian aquifers, we anticipate future
analyses of electromagnetic data from the InSight lander or future
missions to Mars and other planets.