It looks like a "tunnel gully" -- erosion that happens under a layer of loess or loosely deposited material on a solid base; the water descends through the loose layer, runs downhill on the impermeable layer removing material and leaving a tube, which then becomes a series of sinkholes to the surface and may later open up as a very narrow gully with a large hole at the bottom. Then if water continues to flow it undercuts the material which slumps, gets carried away, slumps again - until you get a deep V shaped cut at the angle of repose.
I saw this happen in N. California (loosely consolidated sediment on mountain slopes) after a forest fire, when suddenly 20 acres of drainage was diverted into an old and long time stable U-shaped channel on the mountainside that had always had a seasonal creek, but very well consolidated soil with lots of trees and shrubs.
The fire didn't burn the inside of the drainage, the plants survived, but the next spring there was a 6" wide slot cut where the little rocky streamcourse had been -- it dropped 2 feet down to below the root zone then was a 2 foot diameter pipe.
Over the next few years the sides collapsed and the whole slope on either side slipped down.
New Zealand soil conservation service describes this as "tunnel gully" formation.
It hasn't been, to my knowledge, described in California but it was unmistakable -- just happened so fast that after a few years I would never have imagined the proces if I hadn't been there to photograph it.
The Mars photo looks very much like the surface over a tunnel gully, frozen in time.
