Physics and modeling of wind-blown sand dunes

Abstract

Sand dunes occur in desert and coastal areas of our planet thereby interacting with local infrastructure and contributing to desertification. To form, dunes require a supply of granular particles at the surface and a boundary layer of sufficient efficacy to enable transport of these particles by fluid forces. However, different dune shapes occur in nature depending on the wind regimes and the amount of sand available for transport. Numerical simulations of wind-blown sand transport and the concatenated dune migration have been pushing forward our understanding of dune physics, as I will discuss in the talk. Moreover, dunes have been detected in surprising locations of our solar system, including on Mars and even on Pluto, where the atmosphere is 100,000 times less dense than the Earth’s and the granular material is made of methane ice. Therefore, I will present insights we have gained about the formative processes of dunes on Earth and in extra-terrestrial environments, and discuss open questions and promising applications in the planetary and desertification research.