Lobes of sand
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Lobes of sand by Hugh Venables as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Lobes of sand
Image: © Hugh Venables Taken: 17 Sep 2012
A westerly wind was blowing sand up the dunes through saltation. The vegetation slows the wind, causing deposition of the sand in the dunes but they were already at the critical angle of repose for dry sand so it had to fall back down again in these mini 'sand avalanches'. These lobes were active, with frequent earth flows returning sand back down the face of the dunes. It is unusual for mass movement processes to occur with dry material, more normally the trigger for movement is water saturation reducing coherence or erosion removing removing the base rather than deposition increasing the angle. See Image
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Image Location
Latitude
57.437524
Longitude
-7.393532