GeoLog

sand dunes

Imaggeo On Monday: Great Sand Dunes Sunset

Imaggeo On Monday: Great Sand Dunes Sunset

On a late afternoon in Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes, the sun came out from behind the clouds for a brief moment before it went behind the horizon, illuminating the stoss side of an eroding dune. Sand originated from lacustrine deposits in the San Luis Valley; the Sangre de Cristo mountains, which can be seen in the background, provided a source of some of the sand. This image therefore illust ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Great sand dunes and beyond

Imaggeo on Mondays: Great sand dunes and beyond

Driving eastwards through the San Luis Valley in south central Colorado, United States, the Great Sand Dunes emerge at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Range in the northeast of the region’s upland plain. The origin story of these great dunes begins during a time of glacial melt, five to three million years ago, when the rivers of the surrounding mountains filled the basin with water and sediments ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Of ancient winds and sands

Imaggeo on Mondays: Of ancient winds and sands

Snippets of our planet’s ancient past are frozen in rocks around the world. By studying the information locked in formations across the globe, geoscientist unpick the history of Earth. Though the layers in today’s featured image may seem abstract to the untrained eye, Elizaveta Kovaleva (a researcher at the University of the Free State in South Africa) describes how they reveal the secrets of anci ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Dune ridge perspective

Imaggeo on Mondays: Dune ridge perspective

Imagine taking a hike over soft, ever shifting sands. This is exactly what Martina Klose, a researcher at USDA, did when she captured this beautiful photograph. While most of us will likely think of deserts as inhospitable and static landscapes, they can tell us much about dune forming processes, as Martina explains in today’s blog post. The photograph shows the view down from the crest of a megad ...[Read More]