For many people, there is great joy and good summer business to be found on the widest beach in New Jersey and one of the widest on any coast.
Published Aug 5, 2019
Winds and waves from a February 2013 nor'easter churned up the seafloor and beaches around coastal Massachusetts.
Published Feb 27, 2013
This astronaut photograph shows classic large and small sand masses of the central Sahara Desert, where wind is a more powerful land-shaping agent than water.
Published Jan 19, 2009
Jetties near Ocean City, Maryland, have interrupted natural coastal processes such as longshore transport, altering the shape of the coastline.
Published Aug 4, 2011
Layers of dunes march across a sand sea in the east-central Tenéré Desert of Niger in this astronaut photo from December 1, 2009.
Published Dec 28, 2009
Sand dunes sprawl along the coast of northeastern Brazil, sometimes extending kilometers inland.
Published Jul 11, 2010
The area shown here (10 kilometers across) is a small part of the dune field which is now protected as the Len&ccelde;óis Maranhenses National Park, on Brazil’s north coast, about 700 kilometers east of the Amazon River mouth. Persistent winds blow off the equatorial Atlantic Ocean onto Brazil from the east, driving white sand inland from the 100 kilometer stretch of coast (upper margin of the image), to form a large field of dunes. The strongly regular pattern of these dunes is a common characteristic of dune fields. The basic shape of each sand mass, repeated throughout the view, is a crescent-shaped dune. In an area with a rich supply of sand such as coastal Brazil, individual crescents coalesce to form entire chains many miles long. The wind strength and supply of sand are sufficient to keep the dunes active, and thus free of vegetation, despite 1500 mm (60 inches) of rainfall annually. The dark areas between the white dunes are fresh water ponds that draw fisherman to this newly established park.
Published Oct 20, 2003
Beaches are dynamic, living landscapes. The coast off of Chatham, Massachusetts, provides a prime example of beach evolution.
Published May 30, 2014
This detailed view of the remote Conception Bay sector of the Namibian coastline shows breakers and a strand plain on the left and complex dunes of the Namib dune sea on the right. A strand plain is a series of dunes, usually associated with and parallel to a beach, sometimes containing small creeks or lakes. The complexity and regularity of dune patterns in the dune sea of the Namib Desert have attracted the attention of geologists for decades; however, they remain poorly understood. The flat strand plain (roughly 4 kilometers shown here) shows a series of wet zones that appear black where seawater seeps inland and evaporates. These patches are aligned with the persistent southerly winds, some of the strongest of any coastal desert.
Published Oct 3, 2005
Winds shape the sands that were left behind by an ancient river.
Published Jun 4, 2012
