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Global change is affecting coastal areas and leading them to degradation. This is severe in sand dunes and sand plains, because they are very fragile ecosystems. The objective of this paper is to characterize the relationship between the historical land uses and the aeolian sedimentary dynamics in an arid coastal system, the island of La Graciosa (Canary Islands) since the second half of the 18th century. The methodology is based on the interpretation of historical documents, aerial photographs and oral testimonies to characterize the changes in the island, in terms of both land use and aeolian geomorphology. The results suggest the existence of six stages during which the intensity of human pressure on the environment changed. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.