We investigate flow separation in the air flow over transverse sand dunes. CFD simulations of the air flow over differently shaped dunes are performed. The length of the recirculation region after the brink of the dune is found to depend strongly on the shape of the dune. We find that the nondimensionalised separation length depends linearly on the slope of the dune at the brink within a large ...

A mathematical formulation is developed to model the dynamics of sand dunes. The physical processes display strong non-linearity that has been taken into account in the model. When assessing the success of such a model in capturing physical features we monitor morphology, dune growth, dune migration and spatial patterns within a dune field. Following recent advances, the proposed model is based...

Preservation and effective management of highly dynamic coastal features located in areas under development pressures requires in-depth understanding of their evolution. Modern geospatial technologies such as lidar, real time kinematic GPS, and three-dimensional GIS provide tools for efficient acquisition of high resolution data, geospatial analysis, feature extraction, and quantification of ch...

In this work we present measurements of vegetation cover over parabolic dunes with different degree of activation along the north-eastern Brazilian coast. We are able to extend the local values of the vegetation cover density to the whole dune by correlating measurements with the gray-scale levels of a high resolution satellite image of the dune field. The empirical vegetation distribution is f...

The spatio-temporal evolution of a downsized model for a desert dune is observed experimentally in a narrow water flow channel. A particle tracking method reveals that the migration speed of the model dune is one order of magnitude smaller than that of individual grains. In particular, the erosion rate consists of comparable contributions from creeping (low-energy) and saltating (high-energy) p...

Many barchan dune corridors appear to contain dunes of stable size and spacing [1], and dune fields often exhibit regular patterns [2, 3] with apparent characteristic size and spacing (figure 1). It is still an open question as to what sets this characteristic scaling – local conditions such as topography or sand supply, or common dynamic processes such as those relating to saltation. Additiona...

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...

Booming dunes” are large desert sand dunes that make a loud droning or humming noise during an avalanching of sand. The phenomenon has been observed for censturies, yet it remains largely unexplained. This note demonstrates that the booming frequency does not scale with the size of the particle or with the shearing speed of the avalanching sand. Instead, the dune may act as a waveguide with a f...

Introduction Yueya Spring, or Crescent Moon Spring, is a geological wonder located about 6 km south of Dunhuang city, Gansu Province, northwest China. It owes its name to the shape of the spring, or more precisely, the pond fed by the spring water, which resembles a Crescent Moon (Figure 1). Currently, the pond is about 200 m long in an east-west direction and about 50 m wide. The water surface...

introduction: wind erosion is one of the most important factors in desert environments. prevailing winds can shift sand dunes and affect their accumulation and morphology. also, wind regime determines the direction of sand dune mobility in different ways. therefore, the wind regime, frequency, direction and velocity are supposed to be the most important factors to form the morphology of sand du...