Babolsar eastern coastal dunes have been developed along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. The studied area is coordinated in N36°43' to N36°44' latitude and E52°44' to E52°52' longitude. The objectives of this research were to: Study mineralogy and geochemistry of sand dunes, to obtain chemical alteration index (CIA) and its relationship to climate and mineralogy, to de...

We used a ring-shear apparatus to examine the perpendicular permeability of sands with different mineral compositions to evaluate fault behavior around gas hydrate reservoirs. The effect of effective normal stress on the permeability of two sand types was investigated under constant effective normal stresses of 0.5–8.0 MPa. Although Toyoura sand and silica sand No. 7 mainly comprise quartz, sil...

Permeable sediments and associated microbial communities play a fundamental role in nutrient recycling within coral reef ecosystems by ensuring high levels of primary production in oligotrophic environments. A previous study on organic matter degradation within biogenic carbonate and terrigenous silicate reef sands in the Red Sea suggested that observed sand-specific differences in microbial ac...

Introduction: The Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) instrument aboard the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been used to acquire thousands of spectra from the surface of Merid-iani Planum [1]. The Mini-TES measures thermal in-frared energy at a similar spectral resolution and range to that of the Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) aboard the Mars Global Surveyor orbiting ...

During its ascent up Mount Sharp, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover traversed the Bagnold Dune Field. We model sand modal mineralogy and grain size at four locations near the rover traverse, using orbital shortwave infrared single scattering albedo spectra and a Markov-Chain Monte Carlo implementation of Hapke’s radiative transfer theory to fully constrain uncertainties and permitted ...