This thesis describes dune development on natural and nourished beaches on an engineering timescale. Using a study of both literature and data gathered from the Dutch coast, a new hypothesis regarding the causes of variability in dune evolution is proposed. Following this hypothesis assumptions are made on the basis of which a conceptual model is developed that includes both the accretive and e...

Many species are adapted to disturbance and occur within dynamic, mosaic landscapes that contain early and late successional microhabitats. Human modification of disturbance regimes alters the availability of microhabitats and may affect the viability of species in these ecosystems. Because restoring historical disturbance regimes is typically expensive and requires action at large spatial scal...

Abstract Background We investigated the spatio-temporal dynamics of soil carbon dioxide (CO 2 )- and methane (CH 4 )-flux during biological crust (BSCs) deposition in a sand-binding area eastern Chinese Hobq Desert. The trends organic (C) content density were analyzed this process. sampling sites comprised mobile dune (control) those with algal, lichen, moss crust-fixed sands. desert CO - CH -f...

In this work, we investigate the feeding habits of Pleurodema diplolistris, the most abundant anuran species of the São Francisco sand dunes, during a period of slightly over one year. The fieldwork was undertaken during four excursions to a sand dune in the semiarid Caatinga, Brazil, and the analyses were based on stomach contents. Pleurodema diplolistris were not active during the dry season....

Basically, sand dunes are patterns resulting from the coupling of hydrodynamic and sediment transport. Once grains move, they modify the surface topography which in turns modifies the flow. This important feedback mechanism lies at the core of continuous dune modelling. Here we present an updated review of such a model for aeolian dunes, including important modifications to improve its predicti...

Outcrop exposures of sedimentary rocks at the Opportunity landing site (Meridiani Planum) form a set of genetically related strata defined here informally as the Burns formation. This formation can be subdivided into lower, middle, and upper units which, respectively, represent eolian dune, eolian sand sheet, and mixed eolian sand sheet and interdune facies associations. Collectively, these thr...

The dune of Oitavos, the underlying paleosol, and Helix sp. gastropod shells found within the paleosol were dated using a combination of radiocarbon and blue optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). The organic component of the paleosol produced a significantly older age (~20,000 cal BP) than the OSL age measurement (~15,000 yr), while 14C age measurements on the inorganic component and the gas...

This paper describes advances in an automatic approach for the detection of sand dunes of Mars, based on supervised learning techniques. A set of features (gradient histogram) is extracted from the remotely sensed images and two classifiers (Support Vector Machine and Random Forests) are trained from this data. The evaluation is conducted on 230 MOC-NA images (spatial resolution between 1.45 an...

A vertical two-dimensional morphodynamic model with non-hydrostatic, free surface flow is reported herein. This numerical model can simulate flow and turbulence characteristics over sand waves. Likewise, model can reproduce the sand wave formation and migration process as well as free surface oscillation simultaneously in a moving boundary domain with the implication of a generalized coordinate...