These drifts attest to the movement of sediment on the surface, and their brightness and shape suggests that they have not been active recently. The fossae are the linear troughs which are seen running approximately diagonal across the scene from upper right toward lower left. The fossae are a series of horsts and graben formed by faulting of the upper martian crust. Graben are the down-dropped trough floors, horsts are the uplifted, relatively flat areas between the troughs. The highest terrain in the image is the relatively smooth plateau near the center.
Slopes descend to the north and south in broad, debris-filled gullies with intervening rocky spurs.
Multiple rock layers, varying from a few to a few tens of meters thick, are visible in the steep slopes on the spurs and gullies. Both origins are possible for the Martian layered rocks seen in this image. In either case, the total thickness of the layered rocks seen in this image implies a complex and extremely active early history for geologic processes on Mars.