Over the past 3 weeks, along our with collaborators from Heidelberg University, we started our first field campaign to monitor star dune dynamics. We traveled to the Namib Sand Sea in Namibia in the beginning of March and met up with collaborators from the Gobabeb Namib Research Institute. At two sites in the Sand Sea, Sossusvlei and Tsondab Vlei, we began collecting GNSS measurements of giant star dune crestlines, samples of dune sediments, and star dune structures from our terrestrial laser scanner. Our collaborators at Heidelberg were able to set up weather stations near the star dunes to investigate links between star dune movements and atmospheric conditions.

We have just returned to Ottobrunn and we look forward to returning to the Namib Sand Sea bi-annually to continue monitoring star dune geomorphology in the long term!