Textural variations within different representative types of dune sediments in Kuwait

Abstract

Samples were collected from the surfaces of four types of typical dunes in order to identify variations in textural characteristics over their bodies. These dunes are barchan, climbing dune, falling dune, and nabkha. Statistical parameters vary from position to another and show that each dune has its own characteristics. It is well recognized that all the sediments of the studied dunes tend to be finer from borders toward the mid dune. Histograms and bivariate diagrams successfully differentiate between different localities within all studied dunes. The climbing dune shows high uniformity where medium sand represents the mean grain size of 91% of collected samples. Samples from barchan and falling dune show lowest variability in statistical parameter values compared to other dunes. On the other hand, nabkha sediments are more variable and show higher values of average statistical parameters. All studied dunes are coarser than surrounding dunes in regional areas and other comparable dunes. But particularly, the barchan sediments in Kuwait are characterized by larger grain size, better sorting than other comparable dunes in the upwind (Iraq) and downwind (Saudi Arabia) and other parts of the world.