RHH's photos with the keyword: algae

Photographed after Hog Lake after a dry spring and summer, there was a lot of algae at the edges of the lake and some of it made these pleasing patterns.

This is a close-up of the south part of Biscuit Basin in Yellowstone National Park. The colors are the colors of algae growing in the hot water.

This is a Coralline Algae photographed in the tide pools at Yaquina Head near Newport, Oregon.

One more shot of Canary Spring showing some of the detail including the newly deposited terraces, the hot water lying in the top of them with the bone white of new deposits, the gray of an area that has gone dead and the colors of the algae that grow in the hot water.

I'll be posting only a few more photos from Yellowstone National Park. I've probably already wearied you with them. This is one more shot from Porcelain Basin showing more of the thermophilic algae and bacteria that color the hot water runoff, as well as the hot springs and terraces of Yellowstone.

The water shown is very hot and is run-off from the hot spring in the Norris Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park. The colors are of thermophilic (heat-loving) algae and bacteria that live in the hot water. Water at temperatures of 167 degrees Fahrenheit and above contain thermophiles that allow the water to retain its blue color. Below 167 degrees that thermophiles are bright yellow or orange and as the water cools to 120-130 degrees (still too hot to touch - a hot tub is around 100 degrees) the colors change to green and brown. These thermophiles can also live in water that is very acidic and must be able to do so when the thermal features produce sulfuric acid (the rotten-egg smell in the geyser basins is the sulfur).

These pools are very hot and dangerous, but it is the heat that determines the color. Different kinds of algae grow in the pools at different temperatures, as can be seen in this picture. The green, yellow and brown colors are all caused by different algae. This pool used to be brilliant blue, thus the name, but so many coins and so much other trash has been thrown in the pool over the years that the vent has been partially blocked and the temperature has changed and with it the color of the pool.

Taken by my wife, this picture shows the colored algae growing in the hot water that flows from the geysers and hot springs of Yellowstone National Park. ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2011/10/yellowstone...

The afternoon and evening that we drove up Reecer Creek Canyon road did not give us much opportunity for pictures of scenery. The weather was changing and the valley behind was quite hazy, but we died find one spot where we could see some of the canyon below us. We were amazed at the color that stained the rock formations in the canyon and managed to get a few pictures. I would suppose that the colors are algae on the rocks, but I have never seen them this colorful. The photo is not the greatest but was the best I could get from the vantage point. ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2013/04/reecer-cree...