Definition
Sand-covered area with a featureless, low-relief surface and without superimposed individual dunes or high-order bedforms.
Category
A type of aeolian sand deposits.
Description
Featureless, nearly horizontally stratified continuous deposits (Grotzinger et al. 2005) of windblown fine-grained particles with low thermal inertia. Their surface may be smooth and nearly featureless, but there are often tabular-planar depositional features and various ripple-like bedforms observed (Breed et al. 1987). Sand sheets range from 100 s m2 to 100,000 m2 on Earth. Thickness can range from several centimeters to 10s m (Pye and Tsoar 1990).
Subtypes
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Sand sheet: sheet-like sand blankets with broad, flat surface and distinct geographic boundaries. Their sand is poorly sorted (Pye and Tsoar 1990) and often shows a bimodal grain size population (silt, fine sand or poorly sorted coarse sand). They may contain ripples and zibars and are usually peripheral to major dune areas but occasionally...
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References
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Chojnacki, M., Kereszturi, Á. (2015). Sand Sheet. In: Hargitai, H., Kereszturi, Á. (eds) Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3134-3_325
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3134-3_325
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