The South Saskatchewan River has a long term average discharge of 275 m3/sec, with flood peaks in the range of IS00 to 3800 nP/sec. South of Saskatoon, the four major types of geomorphological elements recognised are channels, slipfacebounded bars, sand flats and vegefated islands and floodplains. Major channels are 3-5 m deep, up to 200 m wide, and flow around sand flats which are 50-2000 m lo...

16 In this work we present measurements of vegetation cover over parabolic dunes with 17 different degree of activation along the north-eastern Brazilian coast. We extend 18 the local values of the vegetation cover density to the whole dune by correlating 19 measurements with the relative brightness index C of high resolution QuickBird 20 panchromatic satellite image of the dune field. Next, we...

Sand dunes are found in a wide variety of shapes in deserts and coasts, and also on the planet Mars. The basic mechanisms of dune formation could be incorporated into a continuum saltation model, which successfully reproduced the shape of the barchan dunes and has been also applied to calculate interaction of barchans in a field. We have recently extended our dune model to investigate other dun...

[1] Desert booming can be heard after a natural slumping event or during a sand avalanche generated by humans sliding down the slip face of a large dune. The sound is remarkable because it is composed of one dominant audible frequency (70 to 105 Hz) plus several higher harmonics. This study challenges earlier reports that the dunes’ frequency is a function of average grain size by demonstrating...

Horqin Sandy Land is located in northeast China (4241’-4515’N, 11835’-12330’E). The wind-sand topography in Horqin Sandy Land can be described as two series--sand deposition and wind erosion. Wind is the natural force for the formation of wind-sandy environment, under windsandy environment, the wind erosion processes such as sand drifting, dust-storm, etc. occurred frequently because of the fre...

Raked linear dunes keep a constant orientation for considerable distances with a marked asymmetry between a periodic pattern of semi-crescentic structures on one side and a continuous slope on the other. Here we show that this shape is associated with a steady-state dune type arising from the coexistence of two dune growth mechanisms. Primary ridges elongate in the direction of the resultant sa...

Interpopulation variation in the diet of the wood mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus, is well documented. In this study, we examined the gut morphology and apparent absorption efficiencies of two populations of wood mice whose diet in the field was known to differ. One population inhabited sand dunes, where food availability was relatively low and the diet was dominated by invertebrates. The other popu...

Studies of dunefields in central and western North America show that mineralogical maturity can provide new insights into the origin and evolution of aeolian sand bodies. Many of the world’s great sand seas in Africa, Asia and Australia are quartzdominated and thus can be considered to be mineralogically mature. The Algodones (California) and Parker (Arizona) dunes in the southwestern United St...

The Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity visited two active wind-blown sand dunes within Gale crater, Mars, which provided the first ground-based opportunity to compare Martian and terrestrial eolian dune sedimentary processes and study a modern analog for the Martian eolian rock record. Orbital and rover images of these dunes reveal terrestrial-like and uniquely Martian processes. The prese...