Data for "The Oligocene-Miocene Guadalope-Matarranya Fan, Spain, as an Analog for Long-Lived, Ridge-Bearing Megafans on Mars"

We made measurements of the thicknesses of dune and bar sets for exhumed channel belts at nine field sites to reconstruct bankfull channel depth (1.4 m) and bankfull sediment flux (0.48 m3/s). We estimated total bed-material sediment volume of the fan (362 km3) from stratigraphic thickness, previously mapped area containing exhumed channel belts, porosity, and sand fraction. Combined with previous constraints on depositional timespan (~6 Myr), we calculated an intermittency factor of 0.004 (range: 0.0004-0.04).

We showed how our approach can be applied to Mars using remote sensing alone through measurements of fluvial ridge morphology. The intermittency factor is among the lowest values used for Mars, implying the possibility of longer depositional timespans exceeding millions of years for martian fans.