Tufa Towers at Mono Lake at dawn.
Like travertine, calcite, and limestone, tufa is calcium carbonate --but tufa is precipitated from cold springs (as compared to travertine, which is deposited from warm and hot springs). At Mono Lake, the springs are beneath the water, so the tufa grows under the water up to lake level. The reason the tufa stands above the lake level is because the lake level dropped considerably when Los Angeles diverted much of Mono Lake's tributaries for its own uses.

for More photos of Mono Lake, go to Search Geology Pictures and type in "Mono".

Back to Miscellaneous Geology Images
Back to Geology Photos