![]() ![]() The dunes environment is home to gypsum-loving plant and animal life such as gypsum scalebroom, a white variant of the lesser earless spiny lizard, and five of the park’s seven species of scorpions. The mesquite coppice dunes form stabilized spots where wildlife abounds. Barchan sand dunes: The bare hail (Horse shoe) sand dunes are crescent shaped with a steep slope on the leeward concave side sand a relatively gentle slope on the windward convex side. It developed over the past few thousand years as dissolved salts and gypsum from an adjacent lake bed were deposited by wind into ever changing sculpted hill, swale, and ripple formations. (2) Minor Obstacle sand dunes or Shrub Coppice. Source for information on coppice dune: A Dictionary of Earth Sciences. Coppice dunes are dome-shaped mounds of sand, 0. coppice dune A sand dune that forms around and in the lee of a clump of vegetation. Clumps of shrubs and grass begin to gather windblown sand as the sand gets deeper, the plants also grow taller, allowing more sand to gather around them. Geomorphic legacy formation of coppice dunes. The dune landscape is geologically young. Nebkha dunes (also known as coppice dunes) are simple dunes that form around vegetation, primarily on the sand sheet. ![]() The wind carries the salt grains northeast toward the Guadalupe Mountains and deposits them at the base of the western Guadalupe escarpment to form gypsum dunes. This runoff pools in the desert basin and as it evaporates, large grains of mineral salts are left behind. When rain runs off the highly soluble limestone rock in the adjacent mountains, salts are leached. To the west are barren salt flats that are the source of these beautiful dunes. Some dunes are 60 feet high and require scrambling. The white gypsum sands of the Salt Basin Dunes rise 100 feet from the desert floor and provide a brilliant contrast to the dark, towering cliffs of the Guadalupe Mountains.ĭifficulty: Moderate. A typical shrub-coppice dune, or Nebkha, associated with a clump of 3 m high Capparis decidua plants near Pokaran. ![]()
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