Parabolic dune reactivation and migration at Napeague, NY, USA: Insights from aerial and GPR imagery

Observations from mapping since the 19th century and aerial imagery since 1930 have been used to study changes in the aeolian geomorphology of coastal parabolic dunes over the last ~ 170 years in the Walking Dune Field, Napeague, NY. The five large parabolic dunes of the Walking Dune Field have all migrated across, or are presently interacting with, a variably forested area that has affected their migration, stabilization and morphology. This study has concentrated on a dune with a particularly complex history of stabilization, reactivation and migration. We have correlated that dune's surface evolution, as revealed by aerial imagery, with its internal structures imaged using 200 MHz and 500 MHz Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) surveys. Both 2D (transect) and high-resolution 3D GPR imagery image downwind dipping bedding planes which can be grouped by apparent dip angle into several discrete packages of beds that reflect distinct decadal-scale episodes of dune reactivation and growth.From aerial and high resolution GPR imagery, we document a unique mode of reactivation and migration linked to upwind dune formation and parabolic dune interactions with forest trees. This study documents how dune–dune and dune–vegetation interactions have influenced a unique mode of blowout deposition that has alternated on a decadal scale between opposite sides of a parabolic dune during reactivation and migration. The pattern of recent parabolic dune reactivation and migration in the Walking Dune Field appears to be somewhat more complex, and perhaps more sensitive to subtle environmental pressures, than an idealized growth model with uniform deposition and purely on-axis migration. This pattern, believed to be prevalent among other parabolic dunes in the Walking Dune Field, may occur also in many other places where similar observational constraints are unavailable.