Monitoring the interactions between rivers and sand dunes using remote sensing

Abstract

The performance of rivers and winds is an important factor in improving landscapes and shaping the earth's surface. Iran is located in an Arid region and the sand plain and sand dunes, have a lot of expansion and at the same time, most rivers terminate in this area. Therefore, an interaction between river process and sand dunes in 16 mining sites was studied using satellite images taken from Google Earth. Key features such as wind and river direction, type of sand dunes and river channel pattern were determined at each location. The interactions were also classified into five types, each of which determines the dominance between the river process or the wind process. The results showed that there is a significant relation between the pattern of rivers and sand dunes, so that in places where the longitudinal hills are expanded, the channel pattern is more meandering and in places where the hills are more dynamic, the river becomes arterial. Also, regarding the relation between processes and river patterns, there is a significant relation between multi-branch pattern and processes and on sites that are dominated by wind, the Alpine Channel is mostly arterial, but little connection was found between the meandering pattern and the processes studied.