Flood traces. Yardangi

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

vel124 in article Gobi Desert. China showed interesting objects. Among them are geological - yardangs

Officially, these are aeolian landforms that arise under the influence of wind, mainly in areas with an arid climate (deserts, semi-deserts). They are narrow, parallel, straight furrows with asymmetric steep slopes, elongated along the prevailing wind, and sharp ridges separating them, formed in deserts on the surface of clay and loamy or denser rocks. The height of the yardangs reaches several meters. Yardangs are also found in the deserts of Central Asia. They are also found on the Tibesti plateau and in Arizona near the settlements of Phoenix and Windou Rock. Yardangs are even on Mars.

Yardangi east of the Gobi

This is the place from above. Link to the map. Wind erosion does not seem to work. It looks like the work of water erosion, giant gullies. The place looks like a breakthrough of water. Left and right - mountain ranges

Oriented ridges

To the west, the remnants are so destroyed that the same oriented sand ridges appeared from them. Although geologists claim that these are dunes created by the winds. But this is not the case in other parts of the desert.

At the entrance to this territory But how to confirm that it is water erosion? This confirms the presence of pebbles in these places.

Dark rock - pebble

There are yardangs just to the south, which are directed from west to east. And as you can see, they are crossed to the west by dunes, which are formed by the winds prevailing here. By the way, here you can see the remains of the western remains of the Great Wall of China:

Remains of this wall and city. Maybe this, too, was destroyed by the floods of water?

And notice the pebbles at the foot of the remnant of the wall

Also pebbles

What remains of the wall is a mound of pebble and clay

Map link

The same wall is much to the east.

The Chinese are trying to protect something. In order to preserve the elements of the wall? Doubtful somehow. Erosion will not spare these remnants anyway. We pass to the north. Here, too, similar traces on the relief from water flows from north to south:

Link to place

First, the sparse ridges in the north of this area

As you can see, these are not dunes, but the remains of an ancient surface. Only water erosion could wash out all these volumes of rock and carry it further.

As stated in wikipedia, there are similar pronounced places of water flows on other continents, deserts. In particular in Africa, North America and Mars. Perhaps this speaks of some mechanisms of the catastrophe. If on Mars - this is a collision with asteroids, then on Earth with what? Maybe with a large comet? The Gobi Desert itself is very similar to an elongated funnel in which there was water from melted ice. And around it - Tibet, the Himalayas - traces of tectonic shift, slowing down of the lithosphere.