  Arabia Terra is a region of Mars where signs of past-water occurrence are
recorded in several landforms. Broad and local scale geomorphological,
compositional and hydrological analyses point towards pervasive fluid
circulation through time. In this work we focus on mound fields located in the
interior of three casters larger than 40 km (Firsoff, Kotido and unnamed crater
20 km to the east) and showing strong morphological and textural resemblance to
terrestrial mud volcanoes and spring-related features. We infer that these
landforms likely testify the presence of a pressurized fluid reservoir at depth
and past fluid upwelling. We have performed morphometric analyses to
characterize the mound morphologies and consequently retrieve an accurate
automated mapping of the mounds within the craters for spatial distribution and
fractal clustering analysis. The outcome of the fractal clustering yields
information about the possible extent of the percolating fracture network at
depth below the craters. We have been able to constrain the depth of the
pressurized fluid reservoir between ~2.5 and 3.2 km of depth and hence, we
propose that mounds and mounds alignments are most likely associated to the
presence of fissure ridges and fluid outflow. Their process of formation is
genetically linked to the formation of large intra-crater bulges previously
interpreted as large scale spring deposits. The overburden removal caused by
the impact crater formation is the inferred triggering mechanism for fluid
pressurization and upwelling, that through time led to the formation of the
intra-crater bulges and, after compaction and sealing, to the widespread mound
fields in their surroundings.
