OK, so tectonic plates and Marsquakes on Mars are not yet validated. It is still scientific speculation.
There is a paper on evidence for it and it seems scientsists sort of accept it.
Link 1
Quote:
An Yin, professor of geology at the University of California, Los Angeles, spotted the tectonic activity in Valles Marineris – a 4000-km-long canyon system named after the Mariner 9 Mars orbiter that discovered the system in the 1970s. Valles Marineris stretches one-fifth of the way round the Martian surface and reaches depths of up to 7 km. The Earth's 1.6-km-deep Grand Canyon is a mere surface scratch in comparison. The formation of Valles Marineris is still not understood despite four decades of research. The most widely accepted theory is that spreading apart of the Martian surface created the system, similar to how rift valleys form on Earth, with the resulting crack being deepened by erosion. But Yin has now found evidence for a completely different process.
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However, there is still the Electric Universe theory which could easily have formed many of the structures we see on Mars and across the Solar System.
Suggesting it was Marsquakes then, how exactly would the surface soil get on top of the thin sheet of ice which must have been present when it got buried? This area is supposedly quite large and extensive, possibly too large for a landslide due to a Marsquake from a hill or mountain.
Wouldn't this ice have been melted over the eons it has been there? It is only a few feet beneath the surface and we know there are wild temperature fluctuations in the atmosphere.
All this is suggestive of quite a bit of water on Mars beneath the surface. I have posted images of what looks like some kind of liquid shooting out from a cliff, so it is looking as if this could be more likely rather than the offered explanation of sand streams.