The age of sand dunes in the Nebraska Sand Hills has been controversial, with some investigators suggesting a full-glacial age and others suggesting that they were last active in the late Holocene. New accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon ages of unaltered bison bones and organic-rich sediments suggest that eolian sand deposition occurred at least twice in the past 3000 ¹⁴C yr B.P. in three widely separated localities and as many as three times in the past 800 ¹⁴C yr at three other localities. These late Holocene episodes of eolian activity are probably the result of droughts more intense than the 1930s “Dust Bowl” period, based on independent Great Plains climate records from lake sediments and tree rings. However, new geochemical data indicate that the Nebraska Sand Hills are mineralogically mature. Eolian sands in Nebraska have lower K-feldspar (and K²O, Rb, and Ba) contents than most possible source sediments and lower K-feldspar contents than dunes of similar age in Colorado. The most likely explanation for mineralogical maturity is reduction of sand-sized K-feldspar to silt-sized particles via ballistic impacts due to strong winds over many cycles of eolian activity. Therefore, dunes of the Nebraska Sand Hills must have had a long history, probably extending over more than one glacial–interglacial cycle, and the potential for reactivation is high, with or without a future greenhouse warming.

With the assistance of the ASTER team (M. Arnold, G. Aumaître, D. Bourlès, and K. Keddadouche)International audienceThe Bulnay earthquake of 23 July 1905 (Mw 8.3–8.5), in north‐central Mongolia, is one of the world’s largest recorded intracontinental earthquakes and one of four great earthquakes that occurred in the region during the twentieth century. The 375 km long surface rupture of the left‐lateral, strike‐slip, N095°E‐trending Bulnay fault associated with this earthquake is remarkable for its pronounced expression across the landscape and for the size of features produced by previous earthquakes. Our field observations suggest that in many areas the width and geometry of the rupture zone is the result of repeated earthquakes; however, in those areas where it is possible to determine that the geomorphic features are the result of the 1905 surface rupture alone, the size of the features produced by this single earthquake are singular in comparison to most other historical strike‐slip surface ruptures worldwide. Along the 80 km stretch, between 97.18° E and 98.33° E, the fault zone is characterized by several meters width and the mean left‐lateral 1905 offset is 8.9±0.6 m with two measured cumulative offsets that are twice the 1905 slip. These observations suggest that the displacement produced during the penultimate event was similar to the 1905 slip. Morphotectonic analyses carried out at three sites along the eastern part of the Bulnay fault allow us to estimate a mean horizontal slip rate of 3.1±1.7 mm/yr over the Late Pleistocene–Holocene period. In parallel, paleoseismological investigations show evidence for two earthquakes prior to the 1905 event, with recurrence intervals of ∼2700–4000 yrs