September 15th, 2007
A Very Short Walk
I took a walk near my house the other day, and I took the following photo…
Doesn’t it look like an alien landscape?
I know what it is, but you do you? Post your guesses here.
I’m absolutely certain that there are people reading my blog who can tell you more about this than I can.
September 15th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Is it a dried up riverbed?
September 15th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
I don’t know what it is (my guess would be the same as Kellybot’s), but it sure looks cool.
September 16th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
The “dried up” part is right, but this isn’t a river. Really good guess, though. What’s the white stuff?
September 17th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
It looks more organic than geologic.
Too much phosphorus in the water? Is it near a farm that uses too much fertilizer?
I don’t think it’s part of the plant’s natural life cycle, but it could be.
The background looks like it has been dry for a while. It also has a barrier to prevent more run off from going in. If the water level has gone down, the concentration of soluble matter would have gone up. I’d say the water has a high concentration of something causing the algae to foam up like that. With that much algae, I’d say it was fertilizer.
But, that’s just a guess from a picture… this monitor is kind of blurry too.
Perhaps it’s some form of egg grouping…
September 17th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
To me, it just looks like dried up algae. We don’t get rain in the summer here, so the water level goes way down before winter. I don’t know if dried up algae is normally white. We see these features in the geologic record; geologists call them algal mats.
I could send you a bigger copy of the photo, if you’d like, Kevin.
One of the geology students a few years ago found algal mats so often that his nickname became Algal Matt. I love that name.
September 17th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
I wonder if that dried algae is part of a reproductive cycle.
I wouldn’t mind taking a look at that personally sometime.
Since you are saying that it’s found geologic records, it’s probably naturally environmental instead of caused by mankind’s influence.
As a guess, I’d say a large concentration of oxygen in the water may trigger that matting. To bad I’m not a researcher…
Perhaps it’s part of symbiotic relationship with underwater bacteria. Those mats may create a sunlight safe area for bacteria to grow so that they may put CO2 back into the water.
That’s all guess work. I’m amazed at myself. That one picture makes me think a lot of ideas. I could be absolutely wrong, but it’s still interesting to me.