Coastal Dunes, Brazil

Credit: Credit: NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth., Posted on: Monday, 20 October 2003, 06:00 CDT Download full size image

The area shown here (10 km across) is a small part of the dune field which is now protected as the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, on Brazil’s north coast, about 700 km east of the Amazon River mouth. Persistent winds blow off the equatorial Atlantic Ocean onto Brazil from the east, driving white sand inland from the 100 km stretch of coast (upper margin of the image), to form a large field of dunes. The strongly regular pattern of these dunes is a common characteristic of dune fields. The basic shape of each sand mass, repeated throughout the view, is a crescent-shaped dune.

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