Sand dunes can be active (mobile) or stable, mainly as a function of vegetation cover and wind power. However, there exists as yet unexplained evidence for the coexistence of bare mobile dunes and vegetated stabilized dunes under the same climatic conditions. We propose a model for dune vegetation cover driven by wind power that exhibits bistabilty and hysteresis with respect to the wind power....

Booming” sand dunes have a remarkable capacity to produce sounds that are comparable with those from a stringed instrument. This phenomenon, in which sound is generated after an avalanching of sand along the slip face of a dune, has been known for centuries and occurs in at least 40 sites around the world. A spectral analysis of the sound shows a dominant frequency between 70 and 110 Hz, as wel...

*Correspondence: Steven L. Forman, Geoluminescence Dating Research Laboratory, Department of Geology, Baylor University, One Bear Place #97354 Waco, TX 76798-7354, USA e-mail: [email protected] The eolian sand depositional record for a dune field within Cape Cod National Seashore, Massachusetts is posit as a sensitive indicator of environmental disturbances in the late Holocene from a co...

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...

Introduction: Dunes are common features on planetary surfaces where unconsolidated material is present in abundance and responds to an atmosphere capable of producing significant winds. Wind is the most important erosive agent on present-day Mars, and the availability of large amounts of loose sand and dust provides conditions for the existence of dune fields all over the planet. They are the m...