Fig. 2: Distribution, characteristics, and geostatistics of slope lineae on Mercury.
From: Slope lineae as potential indicators of recent volatile loss on Mercury
a distribution of all identified slope lineae (white arrows, n = 402), heatmap in the background. Slope lineae marker azimuth represents the azimuth of the respective linea. Locations of hollows identified by ref. 14. are indicated (black crosses, n = 19,110); hillshaded topographic map and smooth plains distribution (red-shaded38) in the background. Hot poles are indicated by white dots. MDIS image coverage (n = 112,424) is indicated by histograms on the sides of the map. Distribution of lineae (orange) as a function of (b) topographic elevation, (c) slope angle, and (d) slope aspect, in relation to a sample of 500 randomly-placed points on the surface (‘background’, black); random points limited to 65°N to 35°S. Distribution of lineae inside vs outside of (e) craters larger than 20 km15, (f) smooth plains38, and (g) LRM39, in comparison to hollows14 and the background; box-and-whisker plot in (e) shows the distribution of the lineae host crater diameters ( ~ 90% of the overall identified lineae population).
