Sustainable Use of Marble Byproduct for Stabilizing Migrating Sand Dunes in Thar Desert, India

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4. Sustainable Use of Marble Byproduct for Stabilizing Migrating Sand Dunes in Thar Desert, India

Various sustainable practices explored the use of regionally available industrial byproducts for potential applications. Thar desert, extending about two lakh square kilometers in Rajasthan, India, is mostly covered by sand dunes formed with aeolian-natured soils. Due to the wind-led soil erosion, these sand dunes migrate intensely impacting the soil fertility, inundation of major infrastructure, increased particulate matter. Limited studies exist regarding the stabilization of Thar sand dunes with sustainable geomaterials. Rajasthan is the largest producer of marble output in the country and generates about six million tons of marble slurry per annum posing a major challenge of land requirement for scrapped marble disposal. Current study proposes to integrate these two challenges through sustainable utilization of scrapped marble slurry as a potential stabilizer to mitigate the wind-led sand dune migration in Thar Desert. Samples from sand dune and marble dump yards were collected and characterized for their index and strength properties. Four mixtures of varying marble slurry in sand have been prepared and utilized as sand dune stabilizer owing to the cementitious nature of the fine marble slurry powder. Wind-led erodibility was assessed for the mixtures through bench scale studies, and it is concluded that the surface crust formed using the marble slurry-sand mixtures could protect the dunes from intense erosion.

9th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics (ICEG2023)

Sustainability