Wind carries objects along as it blows over the surface of the ground, and the flatter and more arid the land underneath, the more effective the wind’s action becomes. In the deserts, for example, the wind shifts enormous quantities of sand, raising it, grain by grain, and carrying it over great distances to form dunes. During desert storms some large dunes of sand can be moved by more than 10 meters.

In some cases sands from the Sahara desert have been carried by the wind to as far as northern Europe. In China there are large regions of soil which consists of fine particles that have been blown there by the wind.

Sand dunes are also found on sandy coasts with onshore winds and near rivers with sandy beds which are exposed during the dry season. Evidence of their existence is found in many geological periods.

As well as carrying sand along, the wind also breaks down and destroys. When sand and dust are driven along in a strong wind against rocks, they act like sand paper and wear away, little by little, the hard rocky areas that they strike. The destructive force of wind-blown sand is greater when the rocks it strikes against are soft or crumbly.

Often wind-blown sand carves strange shapes in rocks, resembling abstract sculptures that stand up in isolated groups in the vastness of desert areas. One of the most common shapes of this mushroom. This shape results from the fact that the sand particles that do all the rubbing are always in the lower levels of the air current and thus affect the lower parts of the rock.