Tufa Rock Formations, High and Dry

The calcium carbonate (limestone) "tufa" rock formations at Mono Lake form underwater, when calcium-rich springs meet the alkaline water of the lake.  The PH of the lake is 10, roughly the same as household glass cleaner, and it has a slippery, soapy feel to it.  There's even a  soapy foam which forms from wave action on the lake on windy days.

Diversion of the streams flowing into the lake to send water to Los Angeles have lowered the lake level over 40 feet, and doubled the salinity level to as high as 99 grams per liter, three times the salinity of the ocean.  If you walk out into the lake you are very bouyant, and your feet come off the bottom before your shoulders get wet.

The lake was described as "lifeless, treeless, hideous desert… the loneliest place on earth" by writer Mark Twain, but the prolific alkali flies living in its water and along its shores support up to 2 million migrating or nesting birds.  Up to 90 percent of California's seagull population nests here.  

The increased salinity however may have contributed to increasing "meromixis" at the lake, a condition in which saltier and more dense water fails to mix with the water closer to the surface, and becomes "anoxic" (oxygen poor).  This greatly affects the lake's ecology.

Another large lake in the Eastern Sierra, Owens Lake, had already been drained dry through water diversions to Los Angeles, but when dropping water levels at Mono Lake threatened to turn Paoha Island into a peninsula and decimate the nesting California Gull population through predation by coyotes, the +Mono Lake Committee was formed and the issue went to court.  Eventually a victory was won, reducing diversions and setting a target lake level at an elevation of 6392 feet, 10 feet above the 1998 level.  Some progress was made, but the last two dry Winters have caused the lake to drop back a couple of feet.  The current lake level is 6382.1 feet, so this provides a temporary opportunity for photographers to catch the tufa formations standing tall out of the water, hopefully as high and dry as we'll see them before they slip back into 10 more feet of water. 

Join me June 29 for a Milky Way photography workshop in Bodie State Historic Park with fellow award-winning astrophotographer +Steven Christenson:  http://activesole.blogspot.com/p/bodie-night-photography-workshops-2013.html

Calcium carbonate tufa rock formations at Mono Lake, California

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