When you think of deserts your mind might conjure the image of expansive sand dunes stretching as far as the eye can see. Yet sand dunes actually make up less than one percent of North American deserts.
Dunes form when three conditions are present: a source of sand, wind, and a place for sand to amass. The topography of the landscape largely determines these factors. The Coral Pink Sand Dunes located near Kanab, Utah, are the only major sand dunes within the Colorado Plateau region.
The source of this coral-pink sand came from Navajo sandstone formations that eroded about 225 million years ago. Persistent winds pick up velocity as they funnel between two nearby mountain ranges. That meets the other two conditions; wind, and a place for sand to accumulate.
The location of the mountains helped accelerate winds causing even large sand grains to amass miles away from the original sandstone formations. From there they settled at the base of these two mountain ranges, and over time formed dune fields.
Sand dunes are valuable geological formations, oftentimes home to specialized or even endangered plant and animal species. Such unique environments lend themselves to speciation, a process by which species evolve by adapting to certain environments. They become endemic, or confined to one place.
The Coral Pink Sand Dunes are no exception to this ecological phenomenon. The dunes are home to the tiger beetle, a species found nowhere else in the world!
This Earth Note was written by Carrie Calisay Cannon and produced by KNAU and the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University.
