There is a scene of a vast yellow-brown sandy desert that extends for as far as the eye
can see.
It contains many billions of tons of sand which over time have formed large sand dunes
and even little valleys where water occasionally flows.
Yet, there is a problem.
As you approach the ocean, you notice a group of large white bears; polar bears in fact.
And, it is quite cold.
Instead of regularly being over 40 degrees celsius or 104 degrees fahrenheit like in
the Sahara, it instead is absurdly cold, with occasional snow on the ground and temperatures
regularly reaching -30 degrees Celsius or -22 degrees Fahrenheit during the winter months.
As, this is no ordinary desert, but rather a unique geologic oddity surrounded on all
sides by the cold Arctic Ocean.
This is the mystery of a large mass of desert like sand dunes and terrain referrd to as
Bunge Land.
Bunge Land can be found within the Far East Federal District of Russia where it is 1500
kilometers north-northeast of the city of Yakutsk.
Far away from dense civilization, Bunge Land is located almost 10 degrees latitude above
the arctic circle line at around 75 degrees latitude.
Bunge Land might look like an island but it is instead an isthmus which connects Kotelny
Island to the west and Faddeyevsky Island to the east.
Yet, while both of the neighboring landmasses have high points more than 150 feet above
sea level, Bunge Land only has a peak elevation of 59 feet above sea level.
In fact, much of the sandy area is below 10 feet above sea level, with simple tides and
storms being able to inundate much of its unusual landscape.
And, despite appearances, Bunge Land is not a small feature.
As, it measures 149.2 kilometers or 92.7 miles from end to end, and covers an area of 2,640
square miles, slightly more than 3.5 times the size of the entire Hawaiian island of
Maui.
To understand why Bunge Land formed, we must first look at three similar features where
sand covers a vast area in an unusually cold climate in the northern Hemisphere.
These regions involve an area surrounding a fairly sizable river 800 kilometers to the
west-southwest of Bunge Land in Russia, alongside the Great Kobuk and Nogahabara sand dunes
in Alaska.
All three of these regions are partially surrounded by higher terrain on 2 or more sides, and
are known to have formed during the last ice age.
For context, sand is merely a term used to describe a rock grain size, being used to
refer to an abundance of a rock grain size generally accepted to be between 1/16th of
a millimeter and 2 millimeters in diameter.
Such sand dunes were created en masse during the last ice age, as when large glacial masses
advanced across the landscape, they ground the rock beneath it, pulvering much of it
into a fine sand after an extensive period of time.
Thus, when the ice sheets began to retreat, the sand particles within the glacier flowed
into streams, and also being blown by high winds characteristic of the region, eventually
being deposited into an area with no major outlet as it was surrounded on 2 or more sides
by higher terrain.
This is also how the billions of tons of sand got emplaced in Bunge Land.
While this might seem confusing, it will make a lot more sense when you realize that during
parts of the last ice age Bunge Land was directly connected with the Russian mainland as the
sea level was as much as 120 meters or 394 feet below modern levels.
Thus, large glaciers scraped what used to be ocean sediments that were already finely
grained, forming abundant sand sized particles.
However, while the sand in Bunge Land is dated to having been mostly emplaced between 15,000
and 5,000 years ago, the entire surrounding islands would have represented a large high
point during the last ice age.
Yet, strong winds blowing in a northward direction from the south caused enough sand to fall
in what would become Bunge Land that it formed a trap on a third, nothern side.
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