<\/a>The Kobuk Sand Dunes, left, Little Kobuk Sand Dunes and the Kobuk River in northwestern Alaska as seen from space on Aug. 16, 2020. NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
Even larger and more visited for their proximity to the Kobuk River in northwest Alaska are the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes (38 square miles). Not far from them are the Little Kobuk Sand Dunes (5 square miles). Like the Nogahabara dunes, both sets of Kobuk dunes are active, still migrating via the wind at speeds up to three feet per year. This movement smothers tree seedlings before they can make a go of it.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
In a 1990 paper, Peter Lea and Chris Waythomas mapped out the active and inactive sand bodies in Alaska. Sand is just about everywhere that glaciers were not during the last ice age, but most of the dunes are now covered with trees and shrubs. Large sand deposits remain on Alaska’s North Slope, the Seward Peninsula and all through Southwest and Interior Alaska (where the Taylor Highway dune is located).<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
In a study of the Nogahabara dunes, scientists including Mann wrote that one of the active dunes’ values is continuing to host plants like an Asian sedge that are relics from the time of the Bering Land Bridge. The Nogahabara is also home to the sandy tiger beetle and the Alaska tiny shrew, which are both found almost nowhere else in the state.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t