Abstract

Studies of the landscape provide valuable information about environmental processes and change over time, and are crucial tools for environmental management. The susceptibility of arid landscapes to even minor hydrologic and climatic changes makes them particularly sensitive gauges and records of palaeoenvironmental evolution. A lack of understanding of the development and dynamics of deserts presents us with the increasing challenge of managing environments subject to desertification and general arid conditions. The purpose of this excursion is to give an introduction to the Australian desert dunefields which occupy around one third of the continental land mass.