Quaternary Aeolian Landscape Development in Thar Desert and its drivers

Abstract

Research on the aeolian processes and landforms in the Thar Desert is not a very fertile academic field in India, especially because of the region's locational and climatic disadvantages. Studies by some dedicated groups over the past few decades helped to improve our understanding of the present-day process-form interactions in the desert. Linking those understanding with the results from optically stimulated luminescence dating of the sediments a broad framework of landscape development history during the late Quaternary period has been developed. The studies so far confirm that climate, especially its oscillations between warm wet and dry cool phases in an overall monsoon domain, was the most dominant driver of landscape development in our desert, and that the aeolian processes became more efficient during the transition from a drier to a wetter phase, rather than during the peak of dry period. There were, however, some notable exceptions to that rule. We highlight some of the unresolved issues, and discuss how analysis of the results from climate simulation modelling, understanding of the complementarities between aeolian and fluvial processes under different spatio-temporal contexts, and interpretation of the satellite sensor-based and ground-based observations of the modern processes can help to strengthen our knowledge on aeolian landscape development in the region.