I visited the same dig site in southern Jordan two years apart and the erosion difference was shocking

What if we're seeing it speed up?

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I saw something just like that at Wadi Rum back in 2019. A survey marker we used as a photo spot was completely buried by a dune one year, then sitting on bare rock the next. @noah_smith is right about it being an active unraveling, not just slow. You could literally see new cracks in the bedrock where the sand had been pulled away, like the skin of the earth was peeling off. It makes all those old maps and boundary lines feel pretty temporary.

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noah_smith7mo ago

That area gets some of the worst wind erosion on the planet. I read a study where they measured over an inch of topsoil loss in a single year at some sites. When the ground cover is gone, the whole landscape just starts to unravel. It's not just a slow change, it's like the land is actively falling apart. Makes you wonder how much history has already been scrubbed away by the weather.

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