Could dust storms on Mars affect tectonic activity on that planet?
My impression is that there would simply not be enough dust, in mega tons, to have much of an effect. I am not an expert on this, but my physical intuition is that for a planet like Mars which is now solid all the way through, there is little you can now do on its surface to deform it. All of this activity happened billions of years ago when, presumably, the planet’s interior may have been molten or partially molten with a very thick crust. Large, stationary tectonic plates formed, but probably did not move appreciably.
