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a Blowout.
The interpretive signs provided very interesting info:
Blowout
In places the wind completely excavates sand between dunes leaving large flats geologists call blowouts, deflation plains or interdunal swales. Some deep swales almost penetrate the water table, and thus water-needy plants like ponderosa pine can sink deep roots in the midst of a desert.
In spring interdunal swales collect the waters of melting snow. During wet years these ponds can last well into summer when toads, salamanders and aquatic insects issue from long-sealed burrows and suddenly flourish.
The Navajo Sandstone's prehistoric dunes also record moist interdunal swales. There paleontologists find dinosaur footprints, frog skeletons, and leaf imprints from 170-million-year-old blowouts now frozen in stone.
The interpretive signs provided very interesting info:
Blowout
In places the wind completely excavates sand between dunes leaving large flats geologists call blowouts, deflation plains or interdunal swales. Some deep swales almost penetrate the water table, and thus water-needy plants like ponderosa pine can sink deep roots in the midst of a desert.
In spring interdunal swales collect the waters of melting snow. During wet years these ponds can last well into summer when toads, salamanders and aquatic insects issue from long-sealed burrows and suddenly flourish.
The Navajo Sandstone's prehistoric dunes also record moist interdunal swales. There paleontologists find dinosaur footprints, frog skeletons, and leaf imprints from 170-million-year-old blowouts now frozen in stone.