Abu Dhabi Fossil Dunes: Frozen Landscapes Caused by Climate Change

Al Wathba, Abu Dhabi (CNN) — Drive an hour or so southeast from the city of Abu Dhabi into the emirate’s empty desert and you’ll find a landscape full of unexpected man-made sights.

The Al Wathba area is home to a beautiful oasis-like wetland reserve, and the story goes, the water treatment facility overflowed. Now it’s a lush terrain that attracts flocks of migrating flamingos.

Further down the path filled with carefully planted trees, a surreal man-made mountain rises above the horizon, its sides supported by massive concrete walls.

Off the main road into the back alleys and you’ll come across the wide and dusty Camel Highway, with a fleet of hump beasts gearing up for the winter horse racing season when the evening temperatures are cooler.

But one of Al Wathba’s more unusual and elegant sights isn’t the work of man. Rather, it has been crafted over tens of thousands of years by elemental forces, and while they were at work thousands of years ago, it offers insight into how the current climate crisis might reshape our world.

Abu Dhabi’s fossilized sand dunes rise from the surrounding desert like frozen waves in a violent ocean of solid sand, their sides undulating in shapes defined by gusty winds.

“Complex Story”

Fossil dunes have formed over thousands of years.

Barry Nield/CNN

Although these proud geological monuments have survived centuries in the wilderness, they will open in Abu Dhabi in 2022 as a free tourist attraction as part of the UAE Environment Agency’s efforts to protect them in protected areas.

Instagrammers and other tourists once required ATVs to head to the fossilized dunes for dramatic selfie backdrops, but now they have the option of two large parking lots featuring a trail that winds past some of the more spectacular landmarks.

Informative signposts along the way provide some basic information about the science behind dune formation – basically, the moisture in the ground causes the calcium carbonate in the sand to harden, then over time strong winds blow them away into an unusual shape.

But it’s much more than that, said Thomas Steuber, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi who has spent most of his time studying sand dunes during the Covid-19 lockdown but has been unable to travel to other geologically significant sites. area.

“It’s a pretty complicated story,” Steuber told CNN.

The Abu Dhabi Environment Agency has put the age of these fossil dunes at between 120,000 and 150,000 years old. Generations of dunes were formed by cycles of ice ages and melting that occurred 200,000 to 7,000 years ago, Steuber said. When icy water at the polar ice caps increases, sea levels drop, and during these drier periods, dunes pile up as sand blows in from the depleted Arabian Gulf.

As the ice melts, making the environment wetter, and now Abu Dhabi’s water table rises, the moisture reacts with calcium carbonate in the sand, stabilizing it, and then forms a cement that is later whipped into the shape of an ethereal prevailing wind.

destructive power

Power lines straddling behind the dunes add another dimension to the scene.

Barry Nield/CNN

“The Arabian Gulf is a very shallow little basin,” Steuber said. “It’s only about 120 meters deep, so at the height of the Ice Age about 20,000 years ago, so much water built up on the polar ice caps that there was a lack of water in the ocean. That meant the bay was dry and fossilized dunes. source of material.”

These fossil dunes, which are found throughout the UAE and can also be found in India, Saudi Arabia and the Bahamas, may have taken thousands of years to form, Steuber said. But while Abu Dhabi now offers official protection, the erosion that gave them their unique shape will eventually lead to their demise as well.

“Some of them are pretty big, but eventually the wind destroys them. They’re rock in nature, but sometimes you can break them with your hands. It’s a fairly fragile material.”

That’s why in Al Wathba, visitors now keep their distance from the dunes, though still close enough to appreciate their indifferent beauty.

The location is best visited in the early evening, when the harsh daytime light is replaced by the golden glow of the setting sun and the sky takes on the lilac hue of the magical hour. It takes about an hour to stroll down the sand road from the visitor center and souvenir stalls to the parking lot at the other end – and about 10 minutes to get back.

Somewhere along the trail, a string of giant red and white electrical pylons strides across the horizon in the distance, contrasting with the pristine tranquility of the dunes. Rather than spoil the scene, this engineering spectacle adds a dramatic modern dimension to an otherwise time-frozen landscape.

As dusk falls, some of the dunes are illuminated, offering a new way to view these geological wonders.

religious clues

At night, the dunes are illuminated.

Ministry of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi

“The dunes look really magical,” said Dean Davis, who visited the site during a day off in the city of Abu Dhabi. “It’s nice that they are protected and the government is doing a great job.”

Another tourist, Ashar Hafeed, who visited with his family, said he was also impressed. “I saw it on Google and just had to come and see,” he said, adding that “once is enough” to appreciate the dunes.

Still, Stauber and his team from Khalifa University are likely to be repeat customers.

“We are continuing to study them,” he said. “There are still many interesting questions to be answered about sea level changes during the recent ice age, which are important for understanding the current geomorphology of the UAE coastline. This is obviously also a simulation of future sea level changes.”

And, Steuber said, the dunes may be evidence of the inspiration behind Noah’s flood story, which is found in the Quran, the Bible and the Torah, all three major religious texts that emerged from the Middle East.

“It could be the flooding of the Arabian Gulf at the end of the Ice Age because sea levels were rising very rapidly.

“If the Arabian Gulf were to dry out, the Tigris and Euphrates would flow into the Indian Ocean, and what is now the Gulf would be a fairly fertile, low-lying area that was inhabited 8,000 years ago and people may have experienced rapid sea level rise.

“Maybe it led to some historical memory that made the holy books of these three local religions a reality.”