Snow Dunes.

Record snow fall made for an interesting field trip to the Provinceland dunes earlier this year. We knew New England had been cold, but leaving Adelaide in 42 C and arriving to -16 C in Boston was a shock to the system. Nevertheless we wrapped up, put our gear together and were fortunately rewarded with some dry, bright and (best of all) windy conditions.

Hope you enjoy the few snaps below from our two weeks in the snow. Thom.

Bowl blowout, Provinceland Dunes, Cape Cod, MA.

Instrumenting our first study site

Scraped dyke structure at Sandy Neck

Lots of sediment still being transported despite the snow

Overnight snow fall. Hey dude... wheres my anemometer?

Patrick wondering where the path went

Team photo!

New Article!

Examples of wind flow steering over a foredune for three incident wind approaches

Chuffed to announce that my first article in collaboration with Patrick Hesp, Flow deflection over a foredune, is now available in press from Geomorphology. Patrick was the most cited author in my PhD thesis and its a real pleasure to be working with him here at Flinders. Here's to many more!

NEW PUBLICATION : Sediment transport patterns in a trough blowout

The trough blowout investigated in the study. (County Donegal, Ireland.)

This study examines the variability of sediment flux and its relationship with near surface wind in a trough blowout. Results demonstrated that sediment flux rates were highly variable even over distances of less than 0.5 m. Where wind flow was steadiest, flux was greatest, consequently highest rates of sediment transport were measured on the erosional walls of the blowout. Interestingly however, correlation between sediment flux and wind parameters was best in the centre of the blowout and poorest on the erosional wall crest.

Authors: Thomas Smyth, Derek Jackson and Andrew Cooper

Published in Earth Surface Processes and Landforms

Fieldwork - Northern California 2014

Unloading the gear. Thankfully we didn't have to bring all this from Australia!

Calibration time. Ian Walker and Michael Grilliot from the University of Victoria check the instruments

Dunes, glorious dunes.

Making use of all that drift wood

Yours truly enjoying the west coast sunshine!