Analysis of movement and relationships between morphometric components of sand dunes (barchans) in the south-eastern of Iran

Abstract

Morphology of barchan dunes plays a key role in the rate of movement of barchan dunes and accordingly, the areas that are in the path of barchan dunes can be identified. In this study, morphological parameters of eight barchan dunes in west Lut and movement were investigated. For this purpose, 8 parameters of windward slope length, back-to-wind slope length, right arm length, left arm length, length, width, right width and left width were measured in each barchan dune and Pearson correlation was calculated by SPSS software. In order to better understand the shape of barchan dunes, satellite images were extracted separately from google earth. The results of morphometry showed that barchan dune 6 was in the first place in terms of all morphometric factors. The right arm length to the width had the highest correlation (0.993). The back-to-wind slope length to the right arm length had the lowest correlation (0.815). The right arm length to the width had the highest coefficient of determination (0.9845). The movement during 2005–2019 was extracted from satellite images. It was found that until 2015, the highest movement belonged to barchan dune 3 (225.55 m) and during 2017–2019, the lowest movement belonged to barchan dune 6 (137.49 and 184.66 m). The highest movement during 2017–2019 was 288.24 and 307.67 m for barchan dune 5, respectively.