Inverted dune swales, Hunder, Ladakh, India

ABSTRACT The Hunder Dunes occur in the Shyok valley, Ladakh region, north-western India. These barchanoid and transverse dunes consist of sand reworked from the seasonally exposed beds of the river. Wind direction is strongly uni-modal from the northwest and is controlled by valley orientation. We observed small (10–20 m long, 5–10 m wide, and up to 1.5 m high) ellipsoidal mesas in the swales between dunes, composed of sand deflated from the Shyok River system. The mesas have a tiered, wedding cake appearance with concave upper surfaces. We interpret these mesas as inverted swale deposits consisting of stacked cycles of sediment. The cycles range from 40 to 50 cm in thickness and are composed of a from bottom to top, deposits of prior dunes, high energy fluvial deposits with climbing ripples, pool sediments with symmetrical wave ripples, and desiccation-cracked mud drapes over the ripples indicating final drying out of the pool. Up to four cycles of deposition were present in the mesas. The inverted swales are being both exhumed from beneath and buried underneath migrating dunes. Inverted swale deposits provide a record of historical depositional processes and biological communities active at the site.