Secular Annual Movement of Sand Dunes in Badain Jaran Desert based on Geographic Analyses of Remotely Sensed Imagery

Abstract

Among the various categories of landform evolution,sand dune is a kind which moves faster than the other.Until now,it is still fewer reports on this aspect while the dynamics mechanisms of sand dunes have been well studied.It's difficult to study the large area movement of sand dunes by using traditional method such as ground-based observations.Since Landsat satellite's launch in the 1970s,it provides long-period,large-scale images for the research of dunes movement.In this article,many temporary and scenes of Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery from 1989 to 2010 are used to analyze the movement of sand dunes in four typical areas of Badain Jaran desert.Direction and speed of sand dunes can be extracted from sand ridges of images after geometric correction.We get following results:① Landsat TM images can be effectively used to the epochs of ten years' dynamic detection of sand dunes in the Bardain Jaran desert;② The movement of sand dunes in North are not distinct;③ Sand dunes in East and Southeast sand belt move towards SE,while sand dunes in south sand belt reciprocate from NW to SE.Sand dunes movement is consist with regional wind fields;④ The relation between the speed and the height of sand dunes can be analyzed with DEM data.There is a negative correlation between them.