A case study for structural and stratigraphical enhancement in the western Sahara desert

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria S. Donati ◽  
Pedro Munoz ◽  
Ali Omar BenGheit ◽  
Lamin Abushaala ◽  
Francisco Ortigosa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (13) ◽  
pp. 123-138
Author(s):  
Antonio Arnaiz-Villena ◽  
Marcial Medina ◽  
Valentín Ruiz-del-Valle ◽  
Adrian Lopez-Nares ◽  
Julian Rodriguez-Rodriguez ◽  
...  

Cart-ruts have been observed in Mediterranean Basin, Eurasia and Africa. They are rock carved stripes and channels which unexpectedly converge and/or bend, not being useful for transportation use because constant parallelism is not kept. Cart-ruts came first to scholars attention in Malta and Gozo Islands where they are abundant and dated at Bronze or Temple Age of this Archipelago. A big conjoint European investment for Cart-ruts study only got a detailed inventory in several Eurasian and African countries. Age and use of Cart-ruts remains non-discovered: it is admitted that different ages and uses may not be the same for different or even same areas. Azores Archipelago Cart-ruts were left out of this study and we have recently described them at Lanzarote (Canary Islands, Spain) volcanoes tops and slopes and suggested that they could have been useful for space and time measurements. In the present study, Lanzarote is studied and Mt. Mina and Mt. Guardilama mountains Cart-ruts azimuths points to Summer and Winter Solstices sunrises respectively as measured from Quesera/”Cheeseboard” of Zonzamas, which is a prehistoric Guanche lunisolar calendar. Mt. Tenezara Cart-ruts azimuth is pointing towards Equinoxes sunrises, as observed from Zonzamas prehistoric calendar. Thus, a use for measure time and space could be a function for some Lanzarote Cart-ruts. We explain these findings in a prehistoric Guanche aborigine culture context probably common to Atlantic megalithic Bronze Age and to all Canary Islands having prehistoric inter-navigation, because all have similar rock Iberian-Guanche inscriptions and other common cultural traits. Sahara Desert abandoning by people also influenced Mediterranean and Atlantic culture. Probability that 3 out of 7 studied volcano Cart-ruts point to Solstices and Equinoxes by chance is close to zero as calculated by factorial probability methods. Keywords: Latin, Scripts, Canary Islands, Iberian, Guanche, Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Quesera-Cheeseboard, Pyramids, Berber, Africa, Punic, Roman, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Canaria, Calendar, Etruscan, Basque, Cart-ruts, Usko-Mediterranean, Solstice, Equinox, Zonzamas, HLA, Genetics, Sahara. Atchano, Malta


1940 ◽  
Vol S5-X (7-9) ◽  
pp. 187-200
Author(s):  
Jean Cottreau

Abstract Describes corals, brachiopods, and crinoids from middle Devonian localities of the Sahara desert in Mauritania, French West Africa, and the western Sahara in French Sudan (French West Africa) and Algeria.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-27
Author(s):  
Konstantina Isidoros

Abstract Since the decolonisation period, the Sahrāwī in the western Sahara Desert, North Africa have experienced very specific sociopolitical transformations relating to their millennia-old specialisation in nomadic pastoralism. This article examines the effects of such transformations on particular forms of making kin out of others – milk kinship. Various political circumstances have obliged the Sahrāwī to restructure their customary principles of organisation, possibly diminishing these practices. I question the effects of the loss of milk kin – particularly of milk sons – and the strains on customary matrilocal relations in the survival pressure on kinship relying solely upon ‘blood’ sons to replace these ‘missing men’.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria João Costa ◽  
Flavio Couto ◽  
Eduardo Cardoso ◽  
Rui Salgado ◽  
Juan Luis Guerrero-Rascado

<p>The terrain surrounding the Sahara desert is formed by some mountains ranges, as the Atlas mountain system in the northern edge of the desert and the Hoggar Mountains in Southern Algeria. Such orography, jointly with atmospheric circulation, plays an important role in the mobilization and transport of desert dust over medium and large distances. This study explores the interaction between complex terrain and atmospheric circulation in order to better understand an exceptional desert dust outbreak affecting Portugal in February 2017. The Meso-NH model is able to represent the atmospheric motions in different scales, and has been implemented with a rather complete parametrization package of physical processes in the atmosphere. The capability of the model to simulate dust emission is also explored. The on-line dust emission parametrization type is taken from the distribution of emitted dust of SURFEX with no need to use chemistry to activate dusts. A set of two simulations was performed for the period between 16 February at 0000 UTC to 24 February 1200 UTC, with the Meso-NH model configured in a single domain at 10 km horizontal resolution and 300x360 grid points. The experiments were defined as a) control experiment (CTRL), and b) dust experiment (DUST). From the large domain simulations, it was possible to assess the source of dust and its mobilization over Western Sahara desert, namely over the Northern part of Mauritania and Mali and Eastern part of Algeria. The formation of a cyclonic circulation at the surface favoured the dust uplifting. Such a surface low merged with a cut-off low that moved southward over the Iberian Peninsula and remained centred in the north of Morocco. Such pattern intensified the northward flow found at 700 hPa toward the Atlas Mountains range, inducing the dust transport above 3 km altitude. As expected, the simulations showed the ability to assess important details about the atmospheric circulation not resolved by low density of observations over the domain considered. Furthermore, the simulations were able to show the way that the atmospheric ingredients were brought together to produce the exceptional transport of desert dust toward Portugal. The orographic effects playing an important role in dust mobilization (convergence and cyclogenesis at the surface) and atmospheric circulation to the maintenance of the dust transport have been highlighted. Such event were responsible for the transport of high amount of dust toward the Iberian Peninsula.</p>


Author(s):  
Sylvio De Souza Ferreira ◽  
Eduardo Xavier Ferreira Glaser Migon

This is a case study that reflects on the complexity of logistics activity in the context of a peace operation. A preliminary synthesis is made on the Western Sahara issue, as well as a brief theoretical review of the concept of Military Logistics. The logistics of the main participants of the conflict are analyzed: the Royal Army of Morocco, the Polisario Front and MINURSO. The approaches are essentially different: national logistics, "survival" logistics and international logistics.


Geology ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (11) ◽  
pp. 991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Lancaster ◽  
Gary Kocurek ◽  
Ashok Singhvi ◽  
V. Pandey ◽  
Max Deynoux ◽  
...  

2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. G. Prezerakos ◽  
A. G. Paliatsos ◽  
K. V. Koukouletsos

The main objects of study in this paper are the synoptic scale atmospheric circulation systems associated with the rather frequent phenomenon of coloured rain and the very rare phenomenon of dust or sand deposits from a Saharan sandstorm triggered by a developing strong depression. Analysis of two such cases revealed that two days before the occurrence of the coloured rain or the dust deposits over Greece a sand storm appeared over the north-western Sahara desert. The flow in the entire troposphere is southerly/south-westerly with an upward vertical motion regime. If the atmospheric conditions over Greece favour rain then this rain contains a part of the dust cloud while the rest is drawn away downstream adopting a light yellow colour. In cases where the atmospheric circulation on the route of the dust cloud trajectories is not intensively anticyclonic dust deposits can occur on the surface long far from the region of the dust origin. Such was the case on 4th April, 1988, when significant synoptic-scale subsidence occurred over Italy and towards Greece. The upper air data, in the form of synoptic maps, illustrate in detail the synoptic-scale atmospheric circulations associated with the emission-transport-deposition and confirm the transportation of dust particles.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document