Formation and Geomorphology of the North-Western Negev Sand Dunes

The coastal plain of the northern Sinai Peninsula is a structural depression that borders several anticline mountains in the south. This coastal plain is covered by a dunefield in a wide area of 20–l80 km from north to south, and for 260 km from the Nile Delta in the west into the northern Negev Desert, where it terminates south of Beer Sheva (Fig. 3.1). The dunefield covers an area of about 12,000 km2. The Sinai and Negev form one geographical unit subdivided artificially by a political border. The dunefield is located in the northern boundary region of the Eastern Sahara subtropical desert, characterized by a long, hot and dry summer and a cool winter with a mean annual rainfall that is below 200 mm.