The White Sinter Terraces of Roto-Màhànà & the Wai-o-Tapu Champagne Pool

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Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland – Jessica Rosenkrantz

Nervous System has recently posted some excellent pictures of the Sinter Terraces of Roto-Màhànà and the Wai-o-Tapu Champagne pool in the Northern Island of New Zealand. These great process-based natural earthworks are caused by silica deposits contained in water that comes from a geyser 100ft above the Roto-Màhànà lake and other hot springs. The Sinter deposits form a wide variety of mini-terrains, from spicules (spike-like growths) to terraces. The depositions are further coloured by the presence of microorganisms. Pink and Orange terraces are the result of a population of thermophilic bacterium, tiny emergent artistic co-collaborators with the silicates in water. At times the formations seem to have frozen the undulations of water into the rock itself, elsewhere crystalline anemones appear huddle on mass at the waters edge.

For large scale terracing see Procedural land art, agricultural algorithms & walk recipes reversed.

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