Wahiba Sands
Interesting facts
- Under and around the sands lies a field of aeolianite, or fossilised dune sand, stretching more than 100 km inland and over 3 km offshore.
- Researchers in the 1980s described that aeolianite as the most extensive continuous deposit of its kind then identified anywhere in the world.
- The great north–south sand ridges are around a kilometre wide and can run unbroken for as much as 30 km.
- Sediment cores preserve a record of dune building spanning about 160,000 years, with sand piling up mainly when global sea level fell.
- Layering in the buried dunes shows sand moving northward, suggesting that winds over Arabia during ice ages blew much as they do today.
- The 1985–86 expedition found five species of nocturnal beetles that survive by drinking dew, three of them previously unknown to science.
- On some nights dew deposits the equivalent of half a millimetre of water, and shrubs such as Calligonum can absorb it through their leaves.
- The deep-rooted ghaf trees of the sands send their taproots down as far as about 30 metres in search of groundwater.
- Scientists traced three ancient shorelines along the desert's coastal edge, the highest about 30 metres above present sea level.
- More than 30 scientists ran 32 separate research projects during the Royal Geographical Society's months-long survey of the sands.
Why it is worth it
South of the Eastern Hajar mountains lies a sea of sand that runs about 180 km from north to south and 80 km from east to west, covering some 12,500 square kilometres. Long known as the Wahiba Sands after the Al Wahiba Bedouin, and officially renamed the Sharqiya Sands, it is a compact desert by Arabian standards, which is exactly why it reads so clearly: in the north, great ridges of sand line up in parallel from north to south, some of them up to 100 metres high.
The desert is young in geological terms. It took shape during the Quaternary under two opposing winds — the south-west monsoon and the northern shamal — and the tall northern ridges formed after the last regional glaciation, piling up where the strongest winds lost speed and dropped their sand. Geographers divide it into a higher northern Wahiba and a lower southern one according to the shape of the dunes. Beneath the loose surface lies an older layer of cemented carbonate sand, and river-borne deposits thought to come from the ancient Wadi Batha have been found some 200 metres below the surface in the centre of the desert. That wadi and Wadi Andam still mark the desert's northern and western edges.
The sands are far from empty. A Royal Geographical Society expedition in 1986 turned them into a field laboratory, recording around 16,000 invertebrates, some 200 species of other animals including birds, and about 150 species of native plants, among them the drought-hardy ghaf tree. Bedouin families of the Al Wahiba, Al-Amr, Al-Bu-Isa, Hikman, Hishm and Janaba tribes have long lived here, and in the summer months many gather at the oasis of Al-Huyawah on the desert's edge for the date harvest.
Getting there
The Wahiba Sands lie in Oman's Sharqiya region. The town of Bidiyah, on the main road between Muscat and Sur, serves as the usual gateway to the dunes and is about 50 km from the centre of the sand sea. The nearest airport is Muscat International Airport (MCT), about 186 km away.
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From the encyclopaedia
The Sharqiya Sands is a region of desert in Oman. The region was named for the Bani Wahiba tribe. Divided between the northern and southern governorates in the Eastern Region. The area is defined by a boundary of 180 kilometers (110 mi) north to south and 80 kilometers (50 mi) east to west, with an area of 12,500 square kilometers (4,800 sq mi). The desert has been of scientific interest since a 1986 expedition by the Royal Geographical Society documented the diversity of the terrain, the flora and fauna, noting 16,000 invertebrates as well as 200 species of other wildlife, including avifauna. They also documented 150 species of native flora.
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