Location 5

Eastern Sahara, Egypt

 

This is a very dry desert in comparison to the other locations in the Sahara. The main dunes are simple and compound linear dunes, sheets and streaks of sand and Transverse dunes, that is complex barchanoid ridges.

The desert has erosional features that are produced from the Aeolian activity. In eastern Sahara, Egypt a feature called yardang is present. This feature is grooves and shallow depressions on bedrock with dimensions of 10 to 100's of metres. Yardangs are commonly developed in soft lithologies, but in western Egypt they are shown in hard resistant bedrock, such as granites and quartzite's. The famous sphinx at Giza in Egypt may be a modified yardang.

 

Yardang features similar to the ones seen in the Egyptian Sahara. Approximately 100 metres high. Image courtesy of USGS

It is argued that they are not solely Aeolian derived features but the grooves are consistently in the same orientation a the wind direction. The yardangs are universally confined to the very arid regions of the desert. The yardangs show evidence for being streamlined by the wind.

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