Winds shape the sands that were left behind by an ancient river.
Published Jun 4, 2012
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
Dunes grow upon dunes at one of the most visually spectacular places on Earth, at least from an astronaut’s perspective.
Published Nov 21, 2016
The Ar Rub’ al Khali, or Empty Quarter, covers much of the south-central portion of the Arabian Peninsula and is the largest continuous sand desert on Earth.
Published May 30, 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
Large linear dunes stretch across the Great Eastern Sand Sea of northern Algeria.
Published Apr 4, 2016
This natural-color image from the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus sensor on the Landsat 7 satellite shows the emptiness of the Erg Iabès in western Algeria’s Adrar province.
Published Dec 3, 2009
he Issaouane Erg (sand sea) is located in eastern Algeria between the Tinrhert Plateau to the north and the Fadnoun Plateau to the south. Considered to be part of the Sahara Desert, the Issaouane Erg covers an area of approximately 38,000 km2. These complex dunes form the active southwestern border of the sand sea.
Published Feb 7, 2005
One of the main reasons that rainless regions like the Sahara Desert are interesting from the perspective of landscape science is that the work of flowing water—mainly streams and rivers—becomes less important than the work of wind. Over millennia, if enough sand is available, winds can generate dunes of enormous size, arranged in regular patterns. Long, linear dunes stretch generally north to south across much of northeast Algeria, covering a vast tract (~140,000 square kilometers) of the Sahara Desert known as the Erg Oriental. Erg means “dune sea” in Arabic, and the term has been adopted by modern geologists. Spanning this image from a point on the southwest margin of the erg (image center point: 28.9°N 4.8°W) are a series of 2-kilometer-wide linear dunes, comprised of red sand. The dune chains are more than 100 meters high. The “streets” between the dunes are grayer areas free of sand.
Published Sep 11, 2006
This digital elevation map of the Badain Jaran Desert shows multi-generation dunes, with smaller dunes resting atop larger ones.
Published Apr 20, 2011
Sand dunes and outcrops add color and dimension across the Namib Sand Sea.
Published Jan 13, 2020
Complex wind patterns left these distinctive star-shapes in the sands of the Grand Erg Oriental.
Published Sep 29, 2013
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