Just a few km north of Danube river in most southern region of Romania (Dolj county) there is a small town with 20.000 inhabitants called Dabuleni. The name may tell you nothing but in Romania is rather famous for the production of… water melons. The reason for high land productivity is actually the… sand, large surfaces being covered by fine, white sands, making the area very suitable for irrigated agriculture.

Sandy soils north of Dabuleni, Romania (photo: Google)

Among the 80.000 ha of sandy soils in the south of Romania, Dabuleni occupies about 3.500 ha. Over the years there’s been a couple of initiatives for taking benefit of this huge area and the authorities developed a complex irrigation system which is working also today. Some parcels have been planted with specific trees and crops but the soil seems to be very favorable especially for water melons. A 12 ha area has been kept virgin and the authorities proudly call it the “only sand musem in Europe” (?!) For trivia fans, the zone is locally know also as “Oltenian Sahara”.

Today we had a great sunny day out in the nature. Together with our friends we’ve been rowing on the Elbe River on pneumatic boats between Bad Schandau and Kurort Rathen (only about 15 km but full of fun). As we were waiting for the boats to be delivered we stopped on the river banks and had a quick barbeque. I used the chance and looked for some interesting stones.

Of course I did not forget to take a small sand sample for my Sand Atlas. This will be later added to my sub-project “Sands of the Elbe River”, a characterisation of the river sediments from the source to estuary. Even if the sand is not extraordinary in regard to its origin or texture, I feel happy with every single new sample added to my collection.

Among the stones collected, especially one has got my attention: a dark, well rounded stone of about 4 cm with lamelar basaltic intrusions in a crystaline mass (the photo above is 8 mm wide). I can only try to imagine what kind of forces got all those elements together over the millions of years of existence.

After so much geology in my previous posts it has been time for little travel. We went out today into nature and drove to Bielatal, a nice region belonging to Sächsische Schweiz (sandstone region near Dresden close to the Czech border). The trekking tour started in Rosenthal (parking lot “Altes Zollhaus”) and we were heading south toward Czech border, then along the border up to Fuchsteich” and then back to Rosenthal. For those not familiar with the area the names say nothing but this website is about sand so here comes the sand story:

On the way back to Dresden we stopped at the spot called “Labyrinth”, a heavy whethered rock formation which can be visited by just walking one km from the main road. The area is made of huge sandstone blocks randomly arranged and welcoming especially the kinds for a funny walk around them.

The rocks are very eroded and in some places they reveal the original sandstone colors: from grey to orange and reddish, all typical colors for Sächsische Schweiz sandstone formations.

Walking a few days ago on the beach in Vung Tau (South Vietnam) it just happened to walk by a stack of small sand balls which just laid down on the beach in front of me. Looking more carefully I had noticed that next to each agglomeration of sand dropplets there is a small hole and after waiting a few minutes, some tiny creature has shown up and gave me a smile.

This was the famous sand crab which burrows holes in the sand and feds itself with phytoplankton and small organic debris brought by the waves to the beach. The eating procedure consists in just catching the organic particles with their tentackles, most of them already present between the sand grains. The crabs are of different sizes growing up to 35 mm long and 25 mm wide, building nice sand patterns on the beach:

Sand crabs are used as bait by fishermen. Some sand crabs are also used by humans to monitor the concentrations of domoic acid in water, a toxin produced by a type of phytoplankton. When sand crabs eat the toxic substance, they become toxic for the birds and fishes that consume them. By measuring the concentration of domoic acid in crabs’ flesh one can estimate the toxin level in the water. The sand crabs reproduce by eggs (about 45.000) which are carried by the female crab on her abdomen for about 30 days.

Some more info on sand crabs, also known as mole crabs:

• digging kinematics (legs coordination) of sand crabs: Faulkes and Paul, 1997
• description, natural history and monitoring of Pacific mole crabs

Altenberg is a nice town located in the Ore Mountains about 30 km from Dresden and close to the border with Czech Republic. The town is a popular health resort in the region, also well known nowadays for hosting different sport championships such as the FIBT Worl Championship in 2008 (bobsleigh and tobogganing). People from Dresden and surroundings  often go to Altenberg on short weekend walk outs and that’s what we also did recently on one of the few sunny winter days.

On our tour we’ve got to walk along the two water bodies west of Altenberg: Großer Galgenteich and Kleiner Galgenteich (Big and Small Galgen ponds). Both of them were previously used in the exploatation of Tin ore (the element described with chemical symbol Sn) but lost their original use due to ceasing of all mining activities in the region. Today the bigger one is used as drinking water reservoir and the small pond for recreational purposes. This includes also the 30 ml sand sample for our World Atlas of Sands collection (sample no 1406). The sampling procedure has been carefully supervised by a couple of ducks

Last year in September we spent an extended weekend on the Usedom island at the Baltic Sea  in NE Germany. We couldn’t go bathing but we had plenty of fun exploring the island and discovering its hidden misteries: the Butterfly Farm, the old Russian submarine at Peenemünde (a former Army Research Center during the World War II), the up-side-down house (the entire house is build and fully equipped with the up-side-down), trekking along the former German – Polish border (a sand stripe heavily mined before the Schengen agreement came into power eliminating the border formalities) and of course the delicious smoked fish along the beach.

Talking about beach… I definitely couldn’t just pass by without loading up a full bunch of 30 ml units, samples sorted out and added later to my Sand Atlas: light and fine, a classical “must have” bunch of beach sands (about 20 samples, most of them also available for trading).

Yes, this is the origin of my sample no. 107 IL-HD. The place is located on the Israeli shorelines of Dead Sea: Ein Gedi Spa, an amazing oasis and tourists attraction in the middle of nowhere.

The place is overhelming you by what it’s written on the shield right at the entrance: it’s the lowest place on Earth, with 418 m below sea level. We’ve been there on August 2nd, 2007 when the thermometer indicated just 47 °C. It was incredibly hot. When getting off the car, the body had to adapt to an increase of two folds in ambient temperature (from 23 to 47 °C) and it felt like the blood gets out of the body through the boiling skin.

However, plenty of people seemed to enjoy packing themselfs with the famous Dead Sea sludge. This is said to contain an impresive amount of minerals and salts and it is sold in most of the shops in Israel as soap, skin softener, shower and bathing products and so on.

But my focus was not on sludge but of course on… sand. Collecting it was not a problem at all since it was plenty of it just everywhere around us. Trying to avoid the curious look from the tourists I quickly filled a half liter bottle and we took a few photographs around.

Among many others, this was an unforgettable experience in Israel and I am more than happy for being able to also get a sand sample from there. Trying at home to dry it out was an impossible task: the sand had so much salt in it that it purely adsorbed all the water from atmosphere and therefore it never got dry.

Article under construction!!!

A lot of people collect stones from their holidays and when they return home, the stones are being forgoten somewhere on a shell in the basement. I personally find the stones somehow… cold and inexpresive, even if they are picked-up from a spot of a great importance. But it’s a matter of taste that for me a grain of sand has a much stronger meaning, maybe also due to its reduced size. It looks like a big portion of human history has been squeezed in one single cubic milimeter.

Well, there are samples and samples… Most are coming from common places like a small river or a regular beach at the sea side but some are loaded with hundreds and thousands of years of history. That’s how I’ve got the idea of picking-up the samples originating from special locations such as archeological sites or ruins of glorious civilisations and list them on this blog. Once I’ll get a new samples it will be added here so please check this article often to see the updates.

To easy identify the sample’s location, I will describe each sand using the sample number in my collection (e.g. 921), the ISO code of country and first order administrative division (e.g. TH-PA), followed by the full description: Country, Region, City, Location, GPS coordinates. So here it goes:

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921 TH-PA
Thailand, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya, Ayutthaya, Wat Mahathat, 14°20’43″N 100°35’40″E

920 TH-PA
Thailand, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya, Ayatthuya, King Naresuan The Great Palace, 14°20’43″N 100°35’40″E

Ayutthaya is the ancient capital of the Siam kingdom, founded by the king U-Thong in 1350 and distroyed by the Burmese army in 1767. The ruins of the ancient city form now the Ayutthaya historical park, which I visited on the October 30, 2008. The park is huge and due to limited time available, I could visit only 4 temples in a half-day trip by bus from Bangkok, with Wat Mahathat being the final stop:

869 TR-AL
Turkey, Antalya, Side, Site of Apollo Temple (Pamphylia), 36°45’50″N 31°23’14″E

848 DZ-TP
Algeria, Tipaza, Tipaza, Ruines of old city, 36°35’42″N 2°26’38″E

272 YE-MA
Yemen, Ma’rib, Baraqish, Ma’een ancient city, 16°1’6″N 44°48’16″E

239 PE-AM
Peru, Amazonas, Chachapoyas, Ku?lap ruins (Andes), 6°25’6″S 77°55’23″W

202 LB-BQ
Lebanon, Beqaa, Baalbeck, Old temple ruins (Bekaa Valley), 34°0’25″N 36°12’12″E

108 IL-HD
Israel, HaDarom, Massada, Walls of fortress (Dead Sea), 31°18’60″N 35°21’15″E

092 IL-HA
Israel, Haifa, Caesarea, Roman Hypodrom, 32°29’53″N 34°53’25″E

Caesarea was a city and harbor build by Herod the Great about 25-13 BC in honor of Emperor Caesar. The ruins of Caesarea Maritima (ancient name, called also Caesarea Palestina) lie on the shore of Mediteranean Sea in Israel betwen Haifa and Tel Aviv.

046 JO-MN
Jordan, Ma`an, Petra, Archelogical site, 30°19’19″N 35°27’39″E

As my real start as sand collector began in Israel, I though about writing a few words about these particular piece of Earth who fascinated many civilisations and still continues to do so. Once you get to know it a little, you either love it or hate it but you definitely can not remain indifferent to its overwhelming charm.

This first part of my articles on sands of Israel refers to those sands locally known under the name of khalutsa sands, also spelled by some authors as halutza or haluza (see the samples no 63, 64 and 65 in my Sand Atlas). In opposite to some other articles of mine about sand, the name khalutsa sands reflects here their geographical position and nothing about geology, although for many people it has a quite deep political implication as well.

Collecting khalutsa sands (sample no 64) alongside the road 222

But let’s start first with geography: khalutsa sands region is located on the southern side of Israeli’s coastal plain and the north-western side of the Negev desert. It covers the beaches and the shore sub-regions delimited in the north by the Bsor River and the Sinai Peninsula. The area consists of about 80 km? of beautiful sand dunes along the border with Egypt, traversed today from NW to SE by the national road no 222 and neighboured by two other smaller sand areas: Agur sands and Shunra sands.

The Khalutsa region was of a particular point of interest since thousands of years ago when it belonged to the famous incense and spices trading routes between Mediterranean ports of (today) Gaza and their capital Petra on the Arabian Peninsula (today in Jordan) and from there to the far India. When the Romans tried to take control of these trading routes, the Nabataeans (ancient people controlling the routes) had to protect their trades and find secure ways for bringing the goods to Mediterranean ports. In order to avoid the Roman troupes, they’ve been forced to cross the very unfriendly desert of Negev and build there numerous fortresses and intermediate stops for their caravans. One of them is also Halutza, an archaeological site included today on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

Basic archaeological activities in Halutza revealed the immense importance of the city during the respective era. According to Jewish Virtual Library, this is the place where a carving mentioning the first known Nabataean king was discovered, dating back from the year 168 BC. Further excavations conducted at the site under supervision of a specialized team from Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, Israel, brought to light parts of a Byzantine kiln workshop, a Roman theatre (the only one discovered in the whole Negev desert) and a large church, all of them being found beneath a 2-4 m layer of sand.

Nowadays, the area south of the road 222 is completely deserted, with almost no vegetation at all. On the north, the Bsor region is a savannah-like area with large number of communities and the whole region serves as a training field for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Stopping the car for collecting another sample, we even met a highly ranked army officer who stopped his car too and asked us about what we are doing over there. “Collecting sand” – I said, and he looked at me with his uggliest expression ever. Coming from a man of his size, who carried a gun almost as big as myself, I wish I would have chosen another answer…

Entrances forbidden sign for IDF firing areas

Being so close to the border with Egypt and Gaza, and also training area for the army, the place is full of Israeli infantry, which makes the idea of crossing it just a quite interesting experience. This adds to the famous peace negociations at Camp David in 2000, when the Israeli former prime minister, Ehud Barack, offered the Palestinians the Khalutsa sand dunes in exchange for the Israeli settlements in West Bank. The offer was neglected by the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat due to the questionable quality of soils and one year later, the new prime minister Ariel Sharon ordered the construction of new Israeli settlements in the area as counter-measure to an eventual repetition of dunes’ negotiations.

If you search through my collection after the word “Heide” you will get a list of about a dozen of sands with this name. So what is that and why I have so many samples from the same place? Well, Dresden Heathland (Dresdner Heide in German) is the name of a huge district in the NE of my hometown Dresden, completely covered by forest and representing almost one fifth (1/5) of the entire city’s territory. And yes, that’s really huge, considering that Dresden is the forth biggest city in Germany (after Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne) with a total area of 328 km?, out of which 57 km? represent only the forest Heide.

This brings a major contribution to the green image of the city, one of the greenest in Europe (63% of its area is covered by forests and green places; and we like that a lot).

Dresden Heide offers great hiking routes for fresh-air lovers and we too enjoy it much, the whole year long. But during some of our later walks I have discovered one more aspect, probably unnoticed by the majority of other hikers: despite the typical forest soil, some paths in the forest are totally made of… SAND!!! Without the sand collecting virus in blood maybe I wouldn’t have noticed that either but with my “search-and-collect” status permanently activated, it was just a matter of seconds until the first baggie got fetched out of the rucksack.

This great source of sands dates back over 600 millions years ago in the early Precambrian age when thick layers of sandy deposits covered the region up to 1,500 m depth. Due to immense pressure and temperatures, part of these deposits were being slowly solidified and metamorphosed into granitic rocks (mainly granodiorite and syenite). The intrusive solidification process (below ground) is very slow when compared to the (extrusive) eruptions of lava and it took over 320 millions years for the rocks to show up at the surface, forming the so called today Lausitzer Granodioritplatte (Lausetian granodiorite panel). During the late Ice Age (between 230.000 and 130.000 years ago), the new granodiorite formations were covered with sands brought by the waters from the nearby melting glacier, forming from place to place real sand dunes up to 60 m high (some of them industrially exploited today – see photo below).

But not only the sands were my object of activity in Heide. The soils formed under acidic conditions on the granite beds are infertile and poor for agriculture. In Heide, as typical for most coniferous forests, podsoils constitute the main type of soils encountered, especially on the western side. Due to massive rocks weathering over time, in southern and eastern side one can also find loamy soils and along the Priessnitz river (main river crossing the forest) and the northern side – soils very reach in organic matter.