Prolonged westerly winds formed the dunes around the Saudi Arabian oasis Jubbah in this photo shot by an International Space Station (ISS) astronaut. Jubbah sits in the protective wind shadow of Jabel Umm Sinman, which is roughly translated from Arabic as ‘two camel-hill mountain’. The hard, black rock of the mountain disrupts windflow and blocks dunes to form on its side. The area around Jabel Umm Sinman was at the center of important climatic and anthropological shifts during the Holocene, a geological term for the past 10,000 years.
Jubbah was built in the basin of a paleolac in the middle of the Nefud Desert, about 650 kilometers northwest of Riyadh. A paleolac is an area where a lake previously existed, but due to climate change it no longer holds water. Today, the old lake beak rests hundreds of feet beneath the neighboring dunes.
Prior to the devastation of the Arabian Peninsula, Jubbah Lake was one of a network of freshwater resources in the then humid area. Even as the region became drier, Jubbah Lake probably continued to hold fresh water for some time due to its location amidst the dunes recharging the ground. This continuous, long period of fresh water made Jubbah a destination for early humans and animals in the Nefud Desert.
Beneath the dunes north of the city, a highway stretches north-south through the desert and follows a road that has historically been followed by caravan dealers. The highway and modern agriculture, evident from the circular fields of irrigation in the center, are just the latest version of human activities in the area. The mountain also contains petroglyphs depicting the lifestyle and culture of early inhabitants. The petroglyphs, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were instrumental for archaeologists and historians seeking to understand the occupation and settlement patterns in the region.
Astronaut photo ISS064-E-6310 was obtained on 26 November 2020 with a Nikon D5 digital camera with a 400 millimeter lens and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The photo was taken by a member of the crew of Expedition 64. The image was cropped and enhanced to enhance contrast, and lens artifacts were removed. The International Space Station program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take photographs of the earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make the images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA / JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Alex Stoken, Jacobs, JETS contract with NASA-JSC.