Related papers: 3D Dune Skeleton Model as a Coupled Dynamical Syst…

The dune skeleton model is a reduced model to describe the formation process and dynamics of characteristic types of dunes emerging under unidirectional steady wind. Using this model, we study the dependency of the morphodynamics of…

The engineering interest about dune fields is dictated by the their interaction with a number of human infrastructures in arid environments. Sand dunes dynamics is dictated by wind and its ability to induce sand erosion, transport and…

Sand-moving winds blowing from a constant direction in an area of high sand availability form transverse dunes, which have a fixed profile in the direction orthogonal to the wind. Here we show, by means of a linear stability analysis, that…

Aeolian sand dunes originate from wind flow and sand bed interactions. According to wind properties and sand availability, they can adopt different shapes, ranging from huge motion-less star dunes to small and mobile barchan dunes. The…

Crescent shaped barchan dunes are highly mobile dunes that are usually presented as a prototypical model of sand dunes. Although they have been theoretically shown to be unstable when considered separately, it is well known that they form…

Almost fifty years of investigations of barchan dunes morphology and dynamics is reviewed, with emphasis on the physical understanding of these objects. The characteristics measured on the field (shape, size, velocity) and the physical…

Sand dunes are ubiquitous in nature, and are found in abundance on Earth and other planetary environments. One of the most common types are crescent-shaped dunes known as barchans, whose mid-line could be assumed to behave as 2D dunes. In…

We model formation and evolution of transverse dune fields. In the model, only the cross section of the dune is simulated. The only physical variable of relevance is the dune height, from which the dune width and velocity are determined, as…

Barchans are isolated mobile dunes often organized in large dune fields. Dune fields seem to present a characteristic dune size and spacing, which suggests a cooperative behavior based on dune interaction. In Duran et al. (2009), we propose…

The simplest type of dune is the transverse one, which propagates with invariant profile orthogonally to a fixed wind direction. Here we show numerically and with a linear stability analysis that transverse dunes are unstable with respect…

A simple model for the dynamics of dunes associated with vegetation is proposed. Using the model, formation processes of transverse dunes, parabolic dunes and elongated parabolic dunes according to two environmental factors: i)the amount of…

The collision processes of two crescentic dunes called barchans are systematically studied using a simple computer simulation model. The simulated processes, coalescence, ejection and reorganization, qualitatively correspond to those…

Barchans are crescent-shaped sand dunes forming in aride regions with unidirectional wind and limited sand supply. We report analytical and numerical results for dune shapes under different environmental conditions as obtained from the…

Transverse dunes appear in regions of mainly unidirectional wind and high sand availability. A dune model is extended to two dimensional calculation of the shear stress. It is applied to simulate dynamics and morphology of transverse dunes…

It has been observed that the direction in which a sand dune extends its crest line depends on seasonal variation of wind direction; when the variation is small, the crest line develops more or less perpendicularly to the mean wind…

In nature, barchan dunes typically exist as members of larger fields that display striking, enigmatic structures that cannot be readily explained by examining the dynamics at the scale of single dunes, or by appealing to patterns in…

A bifurcation analysis of dune shape transition is made. By use of a reduced model of dune morphodynamics, dune skeleton model, we elucidate the transition mechanism between different shapes of dunes under unidirectional wind. It was found…

Barchan dunes are found where sand availability is low and wind direction quite constant. The two dimensional shear stress of the wind field and the sand movement by saltation and avalanches over a barchan dune are simulated. The resulting…

We present a simple one-dimensional model to describe the evolution of a transverse dune field. The model is characterized by the distances between the dunes and their heights, which determine the inter-dune sand flux. The model reproduces…

In landscape-scale experiments at the edge of the Gobi desert, we show that various dune types develop simultaneously under natural wind conditions. Using 4 years of high-resolution topographic data, we demonstrate that, depending on sand…