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As I was reading the article just now it made me wonder: does Mars have a really diverse landscape -- that just happens to be all covered in layers of red dust?

I have no idea. But I'd always thought it looked so homogeneous from the photos. But maybe it's just that the dust covers everything?

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It's worth considering that most of the diversity of environments on earth are really diversity of ecosystems. Strip away the trees and the grass and the topsoil and then Earth would look like a desert wasteland pretty much everywhere.

Also, water! The different colors of dirt (containing copper, iron etc) near here are all exposed by water erosion.

Also, some of the geology is due to biology, especially with respect to erosion. (And oxygen level, I guess.)

Without plants, mountains and valleys etc. would be shaped a little differently, as opposed to "exactly the same but without green on top."

I'm wondering what that channel would have looked like when there was water flowing in it.

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