Led by
Professor Myra Keep, this team uses Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data to map planetary surfaces, and understand surface and tectonic processes on Venus and other terrestrial planets.
Earth is the only planet in our solar system that has plate tectonics as a driving process. Plate tectonics, driven by heat escaping from the core of our planet, drives everything else, and forms continents, mountains, oceans, volcanoes and affects climate.
Surface mapping of Venus indicates that plate tectonics does not operate at all, and that other processes drive the formation of mountains and volcanoes. Mars appears to have had early attempts at plate tectonics that did not evolve, yet Mars hosts the largest volcano yet known in the solar system. Mars also has a number of water- and wind-driven surface processes in operation.
