Martian chaos terrain

99% of scifi papers over these things. Somehow people always land in nice flat areas. Aliens' ground vehicle was modified from an airport tow truck. Talking about convenient flat land.

Even on Earth, with weather and generous erosion, large portions of land are very dense forests or very rough mountains.

I've been reading the Mars trilogy (by Kim Stanley Robinson) after it was recommended on an HN thread a while back, and it's been on my mind to look into what the "chaos" was. Pretty neat

I'm surprised that we do not have any chaos terrain on Earth. Can't find any explanation why. We have had large sudden flood events on Earth, but maybe weathering orders the 'chaos' over time?