Mechanisms for incorporation of hydrogen in and on terrestrial planetary surfaces

Storage of hydrogen atoms in or on a planetary surface can take place via several different mechanisms. If the hydrogen atom reacts to form a hydroxyl (OH) group or water molecule, an absorption band near 3 μm will be present. Many possible mechanisms for sequestering atomic hydrogen are discussed: internal hydrogen in the form of non-structural OH and H₂O in nominally-anhydrous minerals, structural OH in minerals, structural H₂O in minerals, H₂O in fluid inclusions, and OH and H₂O in glasses; bulk H₂O as either liquid water or ice; and surficial hydrogen that is either physisorbed as H₂O, chemisorbed as an H₂O surface complex, or chemically-bound as an OH group on surface terminal sites and grain boundary regions. Understanding the spectroscopic distinctions among these various phenomena is of critical importance in constraining both the evolution of planetary interiors and the cycling of water on planetary surfaces. Proper interpretation of 3-μm bands in reflectance spectra is shown to depend upon the relative contributions from surficial vs. interior hydrogen, which vary with effective surface area (i.e., the grain size and surface roughness) and the volume sampled by the spectrometer.