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Technical Note: The word of nebkha as a name for a desert landform

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

PhD, Combat desertification, Department of Natural Resources and Desert Studies, Yazd University

Abstract

One of the natural landscapes observed in arid and desert areas is the accumulation of loose sand in and around plants, which over time causes the formation of sand masses. In Arabic, this type of land is called “نَبکَة: /næbkæ/”, which means small hill and ridge. The word has been translated from Arabic into English as well as Persian, and in most scientific texts in these two languages, the word “nebkha” and “نبکا /nebkɑ/” are used to express this form of land, respectively. Studying the scientific texts, it was found that there are other writing methods such as nabkha, nebka, nabka and nabkhah for this word, which with the images used to show this phenomenon, indicates that all the authors meant nebkha. These differences in spelling prevent researchers from accessing most of the research done on this phenomenon. In addition, terms such as coppice dune and phytogenic hillock are found in the equivalent of nebkha in the literature. In this short article, the use of the word nebkha in the texts as one of the landform of deserts has been studied. The results showed that in order to obtain more comprehensive information when studying this phenomenon from different aspects such as geomorphology and ecology, it is necessary to search for different writing methods and equivalent words. 

Keywords

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Watershed Engineering and Management
Volume 14, Issue 4
December 2023
Pages 563-570
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