Periodic hurricanes may have brought in heavy loads of river sediment to bury the plants and animals living there.
2.
Activities such as logging and farming upstream can increase the sediment load of rivers, which may hurt the intertidal environments around spits by smothering delicate habitats.
3.
This particular front, above a lush valley where oxen till wheat fields and camels carry enormous loads of river reeds, seems a setting out of some other century.