This research investigates how human disturbance has affected foredune vegetation of the Georgia Sea Islands (GSI) in the United States. The cover of native dunebuilding grasses (Uniola paniculata L. and Panicum amarum Ell.) was more abundant within less-disturbed sites than in sites that had higher levels of human disturbance. In contrast, dunes in human-disturbed areas had significantly highe...

wind regime and sand grain size are two of the factors that determine the morphology and dynamics of sand dunes in desert areas. regarding the importance of wind effects on sand dunes especially in iran, in this study, khartooran erg was analyzed to determine wind direction and to detect sand source sites. khartooran erg is located on eastern north of iran and lies in khorasan razavi and semnan...

Running performance depends on a mechanical interaction between the feet of an animal and the substrate. This interaction may differ between two species of sand lizard from the Mojave Desert that have different locomotor morphologies and habitat distributions. Uma scorparia possesses toe fringes and inhabits dunes, whereas the closely related Callisaurus draconoides lacks fringes and is found o...

This study represents the first characterization of sand microbiota in migrating barchan sand dunes. Bacterial communities were studied through direct counts and cultivation, as well as 16S rRNA gene and metagenomic sequence analysis to gain an understanding of microbial abundance, diversity, and potential metabolic capabilities. Direct on-grain cell counts gave an average of 5.3 ± 0.4 x 105 ce...

An endeavor to feel the pulse of a coast devastated by a powerful oceanographic event is made. Results of field investigations along Tamil Nadu seaside revealed that the tsunami of December 2004 demolished dwellings within strips ranging from 6 to 132 m (average width, 41 m) from the dune, and flooded up to 862 m (average, 247 m) from the shore. The event damaged sand dunes, ripped dune vegetat...

Local adaptation may occur when selection for heritable traits differs from environment to environment and gene flow among environments is restricted. In this study, we used reciprocal transplants to explore both the existence and possible causes of local adaptation in the clonal plant Hydrocotyle bonariensis at high and low elevations of sand dunes on St. George Island, Florida. Individuals fo...

A light scalar field, minimally or not-minimally coupled to the metric field, is a well-defined candidate for the dark energy, overcoming the coincidence problem intrinsic to the cosmological constant and avoiding the difficulties of parameterizations. We present a general description of the weak gravitational lensing valid for every metric theory of gravity, including vector and tensor perturb...

We report on a new click type found in Mangetti Dune !Xung (M.D. !Xung) a forward released denti-alveolar lateral click, transcribed [ ||| ]. We present acoustic data showing that ||| is distinct from the "typical" lateral (post-) alveolar ||, and the central (post-) alveolar !, a conclusion supported by synchronic and diachronic analyses of Northern Khoisan [8, 12]. We use Adaptive Dispersion ...

Aeolian desert sand dunes birth from wind flow and sand bed interactions: depending on wind properties and sand availability, they can adopt several different shapes from huge motionless star dunes to small and fast mobile barchan dunes. These latter have a characteristic crescentic shape and form on hard ground with low sand supply under a monodirectional wind . Here, a 3d barchan model based ...

DEPOSITION IN INTERDUNE AREAS OF THE GYPSUM-RICH OLYMPIA UNDAE DUNE FIELD. A. Szynkiewicz, R.C. Ewing, K.E. Fishbaugh, M.C. Bourke, D. Bustos and L.M. Pratt, Indiana University Department of Geological Sciences, 1001 East 10 Street, Bloomington, IN 47405-1405, [email protected]; Department of Geological Sciences, Jackson School of Geosciences, 1 University Station C1100, Austin, TX 78712; Sm...