Desert life and landforms in the Gobi desert
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Desert life and landforms in the Gobi desert

by Jana Eichel, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

The Mingsha mountains (Gobi desert, China) are large scale landforms formed by aeolian processes. They display a variety of dune forms, e.g., barchanoid ridges, linear dunes, star dunes and barchans. This dunefield is the template upon which both human as well as plant life acts.