The Great Dune of Pyla (Desert Week)
Wednesday, 18th June 2008 by Alex Turnbull
We’re continuing the first annual GSS Desert Week! In time-honoured tradition, we’ll mostly be posting about deserts. For about a week.
Whilst not technically a desert, The Great Dune of Pyla (or Pilat), France, is without doubt the largest sand dune in Europe. The dune is around 500m by 3km and up to 117 metres tall, totaling about 60,000,000 m³.
Worryingly, the massive sand dune isn't content to stay put, and seems hell-bent on swallowing up the forest and anything else that gets in its way. In tandem with coastal erosion, the dune is advancing inland at a rate of around 5 metres a year - which, multiplied by the dune's length means that up to 15,000m2 of forest is being lost every year.
Roads and several houses have already been obliterated by the dune's progress, and if its progression continues at the same pace, in 40 year's time the Biscarrosse road and campsite will too have been lost forever.
See the Great Dune of Pyla's official website for more info (where they also have a good gallery of photos clearly showing the forest being consumed by sand), or read the painfully factual Wikipedia page.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
I’m not quite sure about the biggest dune in Europe, but take a look at: http://www.slowinskipn.pl/spn_pl.php?lang=uk&site=przyroda_wydmy
The dune at Slowinski National Park is 1km x 5 km big and also is a moving dune.
Best regards VooVeek
Just map location for the dune mentioned above: https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=54.746424,17.387238&z=12
VooVeek
The dune is not a whole lot bigger than some of the trash landfills here in southern Florida. I realize this is France, and the loss of a rural road and a campsite (in 40 years) is very dramatic, but one american with a bulldozer could probably take care of this thing.
I tried reading the official website but lost the will to live so can anyone explain, in simple English, why this particular dune is the size it is in this location.
I’ve been to the Polish one VooVeek mentioned, and I thought that was the highest one in Europe. But what do I know?
@CookieMonster: It seems to have something to do with the shore eroding due to the water from the estuary. It destroyed vegetation, allowing the winds to pile up the sand, or something…
There’s a dune a lot bigger in the north of Fuerteventura Island (Canary Islands): 7 Km long, 2,5 Km wide. At the south of the island there’s another one even bigger: 9 Km long, 4-6 Km wide.
Hi guys
I’ve been on the dune a couple of years ago. It is really great. The reason why it is there, is because of the small sand islands in front of the coast. The history of the dune goes back 18000 years. As I can read on the german wikipedia page: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_du_Pyla there are many different layers with different reasons why they are there.
The Dune de Pyla is supposed to be the “highest” dune in Europe, not the longest or widest. It is about 117 m or 377 feet high. Are the ones in Poland and the Canary Islands as high or just bigger in length and width?