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Sastruga

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms

  • 63 Accesses

Definition

Meter-scale longitudinal snow feature produced by strong winds.

Category

A type of snow feature.

Plural

Sastrugi (Russian); variation, zastruga; synonym, skavler

Description

Sastrugi are irregular, wavelike, or domical ridges or grooves (Doumani 1967), which align parallel with the prevailing wind direction (Fig. 1). Similar to other erosional features and unlike depositional features, their steep face is on the windward side (Daffern 2009) and may be overhanging, forming a snow cornice (Averianov 1969, p. 28). Sastrugi fields – e.g., ridges separated by grooves – can produce a terrain of extreme surface roughness (Benson 1971). Sets of sastrugi of different orientations can form a network of ridges (Warren et al. 1998).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Sastrugi (near-vertical lineations in the image) perpendicular to snow megadunes in Antarctica near 78°S 120°E. MODIS mosaic of Antartica, NSIDC-0280 (NASA/NSIDC/UC) (Scambos et al. 2007). Inset: leaping dolphin-shaped sastrugi (Ted Scambos, NSIDC,...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Planetary Science Research Group, Eötvös Loránd University, Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

    Henrik Hargitai

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  1. Henrik Hargitai
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Correspondence to Henrik Hargitai .

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Hargitai, H. (2014). Sastruga. In: Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_619-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9213-9_619-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-9213-9

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