Sand & geology
Cox's Bazar Beach
quartz-dominant
What's in the sand
At 120 km, Cox's Bazar is often claimed as the longest natural sand beach on Earth. The sand is fine quartz sourced from the Ganges-Brahmaputra sediment system — the same Himalayan-erosion feedstock that builds most of Bangladesh's coastline.
References: source 1
Predicted regional composition
Q-F-L (quartz, feldspar, lithic) fractions sampled from the GloPrSM global sand model at this beach's location.
Q 77%
L 20%
GloPrSM v1.0.0 (IJ_QFL). GloPrSM is calibrated on modern river sand; beach sand in the same watershed is a reasonable proxy but not identical.
Got a close-up photo of the sand here?
Take a picture with a coin for scale and send it over. We're building a global grain-photo library and this beach isn't in it yet.
Cox's Bazar Beach21.4300, 91.9600