The Future of the Great Sand Dunes National Park

The Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve has certainly made a name for itself in the Geography world by being and extremely interesting piece of geographical landscape. As a brief description the geography of the Dunes is made up of a couple different geographical elements. The dunes are surrounded by two separate mountain ranges, the Sange De Cristo Mountain Range and the San Juan Mountain Range which were created by moving plates beneath the Earth’s surface. In between the mountain ranges is a large valley. Another geographical element at the dunes is the Medano Creek which serves as home to a larger hydrology system under the surface. The actual dunes are formed by specific wind patterns and are made of sand. There are also various types of dunes. All of these geographical factors have not only played a role in creating the dunes as we know them today, but are also responsible for the geographic future of the sand dunes.

Based on the geographical structure of the sand dunes and my knowledge in geography I can make educated guesses on what the dunes will look like in the future. In 1,000 years I suspect the dunes will not look much different than they do now. This is because the wind patterns seen around the dunes. These patterns balance each other out making the formation of the dunes rather consistent. Since the dunes have existed we have not seen many changes, but this is not saying that they do not change. Scientists have discovered many new things about the dunes even in just the recent future that proves the dunes do change over time.

In 10,000 years I think we will see a little bit of change in the Great Sand Dunes. I think that we will see a growth in the amount of dunes. This will be very slight, but I do think that it will occur because it is continuously occurring as we speak, slowly, but definitely.  I think this because of the vegetation that occurs along the dunes. Wind eventually erodes the vegetated dune, which as discussed in my previous blogs, this natural occurrence creates what are called parabolic dunes. These parabolic dunes eventually migrate into the main dune area creating more surface area of dunes for the future.

100,000 years in the future is when we will most likely see the most change. This is because any geographical process that occurs is typically a slow process. I believe a lot of vegetation will occur on the older dunes and that they will remain as they are because of the vegetation growth because vegetation on the large dunes typically stops them from migrating. However, there will certainly be more dunes than there are now because sand constantly is being carried to the dunes via wind and Medano Creek. Another reason we will not see a lot of major change is because the hydrology system of the dunes. The hydrology system consists of a high water table keeping the under layers of the dunes wet, making them more solid and heavy, keeping them in place.

Although the Great Sand Dunes definitely change on a daily basis, we as scientists and observers don’t get to see a lot of this change because it occurs very slowly over time. However change is a guarantee given the dunes geographical elements such as wind pattern, vegetation, and hydrology. It seems that change is held within the closed system of the Great Sand Dunes National Park, but that it will also keep occurring as long as the dunes exist.