Have you ever heard of a sand dune? Well, if you haven’t, I will tell you about them in this report. I will also tell you how I made a tasty model of a coastal sand dune. So….start reading! Sand dunes are fragile and formed by wind and water moving and sculpting the sand. The dune starts with wind that moves the sand. The wind moves it into piles just like a snow drift. The sand will build up on itself layer upon layer. Each new wind can make the dune larger and each new pile of sand can grow into a huge dune. Sand dunes form around stuff on the beach like rocks, drift wood and stuff that washes up on the beach during high tide. Inside sand dunes there are plant roots, which hold the sand together. This helps protect the sand dune from being destroyed. A dune holds the sand on the beach to help cut down erosion. Dunes are very important, without them the beaches would disappear. Coastal sand dunes can be found in North Carolina, South Carolina, Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, Georgia and Texas. Dunes on the Georgia coast normally grow 10 to 12 feet tall and can be found all along Georgia’s barrier islands. These Dunes and islands have protected Georgia from the ocean tide.

Plants are an important part of a dune. Plants that are on the fore dune must be able to take salt sprays, strong winds and burial by blowing sand. Plants like sea rocket, beach croton and Russian thistle grow here. On top of the dunes grass such as salt meadow cord grass, bitter panic grass and drop seed grass grow. The rear dune will have larger shrub type growth with deeper roots and dense dune mats that hold the dune together. Behind the dunes will be trees ad forests which are protected from the sea. sea rockets drop seed grass cord grass

Sand dunes also provide habitats for wildlife. The kinds of things that live on sand dunes are shorebirds, invertebrates (crabs, insects and mollusks) and small mammals. Snakes, lizards and small rodents also burrow in the dunes and live. People are a threat to dunes. Many people visit beaches to play, drive cars and picnic on the beach, this can tear up the dunes. Some people work hard to protect the dunes from damage and allow the wildlife to live. For my project I decided to make a cake for the model. In my project, I used vanilla cake, blue sprinkles, white icing, fruit roll ups, tootsie rolls, artificial grass and graham crackers. First, I mixed up the cake mix and put it in the oven. When the cake was done I got it from the oven and let it cool. I then shaped the cake and put icing on top. I put graham crackers in a food processor and ground them up. After that the graham crackers looked like sand and I put them all over the icing. The next thing I did was put blue sprinkles on the cake for water. I used some artificial grass to make the grasses and shrubs whose roots hold the dune together. Then I used some fruit roll ups and tootsie rolls to make some of the animals that live on a dune. The very last thing I did was make a piece of cake look like the inside of the dune. I used a paper plate and put icing on it and then graham cracker crumbs. Then I placed some tootsie rolls on the sand to look like driftwood and some green fruit roll up to look like seaweed. These are great places for a sand dune to start. Next I layered another piece of cake and graham crackers and added some brown sprinkles to look like decomposed plants and fruit roll ups to look like plant roots. The next layer of the dune was made with another layer of cake, icing and graham crackers. On top of that layer, I put some more plants to look like the top of the dune. Those plants have roots that help hold and protect the dune too. This piece of cake is to help show how the plants hold the dune together and model what the inside of the dune looks like. My model shows everything about the dune except the wind!