Other Dunes and Other Sand Deposits - Dune Worlds: How Windblown Sand Shapes Planetary Landscapes - page 95

Fig. 7.14 Linear dunes in the
Rub' Al Khali breaking up into
chains of stars (or perhaps
crescentic peaks; see also
Fig. 6.23 ), with near-orthogonal
trails of sand forming a trellis
pattern. Field inspection shows
some of these orthogonal trails of
sand to be streams of reversing
barchans (see Fig. 6.25 ) . The
overall arrangement of these
dunes likely reflects a transitional
morphology as the dune pattern
slowly responds to a change in
wind regime. Credit Spot Image
Fig. 7.15 The monster dunes in
the Badain Jaran desert in China
are usually described as star
dunes, although they are
somewhat crescentic in form,
suggesting perhaps the
imposition of a more unimodal
recent wind regime. They are
notable in that the water table is
sufficiently close to the surface
that many dunes have lakes
at their base. Compare with
a field photo (Fig. 11.7 ) and
with an airplane window view
(Fig. 18.1 ) . ASTER image
courtesy of NASA/GSFC/METI/
ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./
Japan ASTER Science Team