"What Was That?" -- Bizarre Colors

Colors

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How to Use This Tool: Say you just flew over some interestingly-colored terrain, and now you want to know what it is. Scroll down through some of the possibilities below. If you find what you're looking for, you can open it in Google Earth by clicking the Google Earth icon:

Iron is often responsible for many of the colors you can see from above. {read about the many colors of Iron}

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White (Salt) - White salt crusts frequently form on dry lake beds in the desert. As the water evaporates, it leaves behind "evaporite" minerals, for example, sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate {read more}

Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.

Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms here.

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Lightening (Grain Size) - One of the most common reasons for a sudden light patch in an otherwise uniform terrain is a change in grain size. Ground-up rock (i.e., sand) is usually lighter than the rock it came from. So mines, alluvial fans, dunes, and other piles of freshly-ground dirt appear lighter than the surrounding rock.

Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~12 miles, and so are each ~3 miles across.

Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms here.

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Black (Basalt Lava) - Large splotches of black, especially in the southwest, are often lava flows {read more}

Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~12 miles, and so are each ~3 miles across.

Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms here.

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Banded Colors (Sedimentary Rocks) - As a river or stream erodes down through a stack of sedimentary layers, it exposes deeper and deeper layers. If they layers are sufficiently different kinds of rock (e.g., shale, limestone, sandstone), they often look like stripes of color when viewed from above {read more}.

Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.

Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms here.

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Dark Sands (in deserts) - Frequently, desert sands and rocks will appear dark due to a coating of iron, manganese, and clay called desert varnish. A rock surface that is exposed to the desert environment for more than a few years will develop this varnish. From above, you will commonly see this effect on alluvial fans: the young, fresh sands will be bright, while the older sands (which are the same composition and grain size as the younger sands) will be stained a darker color {read more}

Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.

Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms here.

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Bright Turquoise Water - Tailings ponds filled with mine debris can have spectacular color variations. Bright turquoise waters are often caused by very fine suspected clay particles {read more}

Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.

Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms here.