Week 3 Post - Donovan Olson

Although I have not personally been there, the Sahara Desert has always been a piece of geology that has always fascinated me. The Sahara Desert is the hottest desert that we have on planet earth. In the image below, we can see a clear example of some of the wind erosion that is taking place – more specifically suspended load. From our chapter examples, we see that sand can be difficult to carry in the wind due to its weight and shape. Dust however from the Sahara Desert can be moved many of miles. This suspended load action is when fine particulars that are lighter than sand are picked up and blown short or long distances. This information in mind, the dust can be hard to pick up due to its size in nature which is flat. However, if sand is moved very slightly it can bounce off those dust particles and create a sandstorm like action. Now when speaking in terms of dunes, many types of dunes can be found in the Sahara Desert. For example, in the top picture, we can see a few examples of dunes that were created from the wind. In the very back a star dune can be observed. These types of dunes are formed due the wind going in several different directions where there is no real pattern of wind direction that can be observed. These dunes usually have 3-4 crested ridges. Another example of dunes can be at the very front of the image that shows Transverse dunes. These are formed by the wind be relatively the same on that portion of the desert. Although these are very small in nature they can grow in size.