Mono Lake, California.Anyone who has visited or seen pictures of the Tufa structures at Mono Lake ha

Mono Lake, California.Anyone who has visited or seen pictures of the Tufa structures at Mono Lake has probably been intrigued as to how exactly they could have formed. Mono Lake is fed by three creeks: Lee Vining, Rush, and Mill. Despite this influx of water, the lake doesn’t have an outlet to the sea. This is crucial to the Tufa, as it means all dissolved minerals and salts from the catchment area stay within the lake. The salinity of the lake varies with its depth (and so the alkalinity varies considerably too for example in 1982 (at the all-time recorded low of water level) there was 99g of salt per litre, but by 2001 this had reduced to 78g/L (as more water dilutes the concentration of salt).But why is all this salt key to these majestic structures? Well, these structures as aforementioned are called Tufa and are a type of limestone. Tufa forms when carbonate minerals (minerals containing a carbonate ion e.g. Calcium Carbonate) precipitate from warm water from an underwater spring, forming these spectacular columns. As water enters the lake from the warm underground springs it carries dissolved carbonate ions. This carbonate reacts with calcium in the alkaline lake water, forming calcium carbonate which precipitates as a columnar structure around the spring (a process similar to how hydrothermal black smokers form at spreading ridges).~SAhttp://bit.ly/1HE5uWE by Eric Wienke -- source link

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