The Beach: a River of Sand

You get up in the morning and go out on the beach. It is the same beach you walked on yesterday. Tomorrow you will go to the same beach and it will be there as always. The tide may have brought in some new shells or possibly some trash, but the beach is the beach. It hasn’t gone anywhere. That is an illusion.

Demand for Sand Takes Off Because Off Fracking

Frackers are expected to use nearly 95 billion pounds of sand this year, up nearly 30% from 2013. There are growing restraints on sand supplies and oil companies’ insatiable appetite has generated renewed interest in second-tier deposits of lower-quality brown sand in places like Texas.

Bahamas Bacteria Feeding on Mineral-Rich Dust from the Saharan Desert

Bacteria living in the warm waters off the Bahama Islands may feed on the mineral-rich dust that the wind carries over from the Sahara Desert, a new study finds. Winds may blow the dust about 5,000 miles across the Sahara and the Atlantic Ocean, before it settles along the Great Bahama Bank, a raised limestone platform on the ocean floor near the islands.

As Dams Fall, Rapid Changes On Elwha River

The final chunks of concrete are expected to fall this September in the nation’s largest dam-removal project, but nature is already reclaiming the Elwha River on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, as sediment once trapped, now flows downstream replenishing eroding beaches and creating new habitat for marine creatures not observed there in years..

Alluvial Fan in Kazakhstan

Mountain streams are usually confined to narrow channels and tend to transport sizable amounts of gravel, sand, clay, and silt, material that geologists call alluvium.