Can't say I've fully grasped the science behind cross-bedding yet, but I was quickly and fully hypnotized by these computer animations of sedimentary migration and deposition. Some screen caps follow.

I'll assume that everyone will download and watch them on a continuous trance-inducing loop.





I wonder if you can harness energy from these land migrations and conceive a park out of it: a terrestrial version of the Wave Garden. Just settle yourself atop a dune, watch landscapes after landscapes pass by, and at the end of your picnic, you find yourself on the other side of the continent.





You can, in fact, download the bedform simulation software, supposedly the same one used to produce the animations, to create your own rippling topography.

Such as these:







Obviously, it brings up interesting scenarios of landscape architects, in drunken stupors at 3 in the morning, downloading the software to design their own sinuous landforms. Perhaps as a gag, to throw off the visiting critic. Or to one-up Michael van Valkenburgh and Kathryn Gustafson, ending their monopoly on tumuli earthforms. Or perhaps a moment of inspired experimentation. But most likely because they simply can't navigate their way through formZ or Maya or even AutoCAD inebriated.

And just to add a bit more oddity (or realism) to the scenario, imagine them sprinkling a few digitized models of Classical architecture into the simulation and laughing, still drunk, at their fixed proportions and rigid geometry rapidly crumbling, dissolving in the ever shifting landscape.

(All screen caps taken from animations created by David M. Rubin and Carissa L. Carter, U.S. Geological Survey.)