Glass Beach of California United States

Glass Beach is situated near Fort Bragg in Northern California used to be the place where locals’ inhabitants brought all forms of their trash from their old cars to their kitchen leftovers to a dump located on the beach starting in 1949. In 1960’2 the officials starts to regulate what was dumped on the beach, first setting a full stop to toxins and later on for everything when the North coast Water Quality Board moved the official dump to a different location in 1967. Fort Bragg peoples referred to it as "The Dumps." Fires were lit to reduce the size of the trash pile.

After 50 years of time, the remnants are still very clear on the beach and much of the glass that was left on the beach front during its dirty decades has not gone far, and thrashing waves have softened and polished the broken pieces. Several cleanup programs were undertaken through the years to rectify the damage. But over the next several decades the pounding waves cleaned the beach, by breaking down everything however glass and pottery and tumbling those into the small, smooth, colored pieces that Cover Glass Beach.Currently beach is well covered with stone size pieces of sea glass coloring the seascape and adding a tourist element to the natural beauty of the spot. Glass Beach is part of the MacKerricher State Park and adding another side to its history.

Glass Beach is the only area of the California Park System to have been at one point in time a part of the Mendocino Indian Reservation. Therefore; due to its historic significance, the beach is maintained by the parks department which does its best to preserve the natural, and not-so-natural, beauty of Glass Beach. Glass beach has become popular within tourist and now frequently visited by tourists. But collecting is not allowed on the park's beach, though sea glass can be found on other local beaches outside the park boundary. A Glass Festival is held annually on Memorial Day weekend. Therefore; a huge numbers of tourists visit Fort Bragg's glass beaches every day in the summer. Most of them collect the some glass and because of wave action is constantly grinding down the glass, the glass is slowly diminishing. There is currently a move to replenish the beaches with discarded glass. It is a great place to visit especially in summer days.

Toxic Algae Bloom on Lake Erie

Lake Erie is the fourth largest of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the 11th largest lake in the world, in terms of surface area. Lake Erie, aside from providing drinking water to the neighboring population, is a source for many waterborne commerce, navigation, and manufacturing. Outflow from Lake Erie spins the immense turbines at Niagara Falls providing hydroelectric power to Canada and the U.S. The intensive industrial development along the shores of the lake has been devastating the lake’s environment for decades with lot of issues like; overfishing, pollution and more recently fast algae blooms.

During the summer months, Lake Erie along with the rest of the five Great Lakes smothers under massive swaths of green algae, often spread over thousands of square kilometers in size. The algae flourish by feeding on excess nutrients in the form of phosphorous in the water. The phosphorus comes from sewage treatment plants and fertilizer used in farms that runoff along with rain water and enters into streams and rivers ultimately winding up in Lake Erie. Blue-green algae also prosper on light. Lake Erie, being the shallowest of the Great Lakes, particularly at its west end, is further susceptible to algae than its deeper cousins, which do not have the same penetration of sunlight. The algae float on the surface and proliferate rapidly, and when they die, they sink to the bottom of the lake, where they falloff and absorb the oxygen in the water creating dead zones where most aquatic animals cannot live. Hundreds of thousands of dead fish washed up on Erie’s shores during 2011 when the lake saw the biggest algae bloom in recorded history. The blue-green algae occupied Lake Erie covering as much as one/sixth of the surface, ranging from Toledo, Ohio to beyond Cleveland and along the Ontario shore. It stretched over 20 KM from the shores, and in the central basin it was observed at a depth of at least 60 feet.

Not all types of algae are destructive, but the bloom is primarily microcytic aeruginosa, algae that is toxic to mammals. Microcystis aeruginosa produces a liver toxin, microcystin, that commonly kills dogs swimming in infected water and causes skin irritation, respiratory difficulty and gastrointestinal distress in humans. However; algae blooms were common in the lake’s shallow western basin in the 1950’s and 60’s. Phosphorus from farms, sewage, and industry fertilized the waters so that massive algae blooms developed year after year. The blooms subsided a bit starting in the 1970,s when regulations and developments in agriculture and sewage treatment restricted the amount of phosphorus that reached the lake. But the problem has resurfaced in the recent years.Source: Amusing Planet

Gypsum Lakes or Birridas of Shark Bay

The Shark Bay or Birridas of Shark Bay is having outstanding natural features and a world Heritage site, the most westerly point of the Australian continent, next to the Indian. Scattered around Shark Bay, especially within Peron Peninsula inside the Francois Peron National Park, are a number of saline lakes of gypsum, famous among local’s peoples is “Birridas”.

It is believed thousands of years ago, when the sea levels were much higher than they are today, birridas were landlocked saline lakes among sand dunes. The water was so rich in sulphate of lime that was deposited onto the lake floor. But with the passage of time when the sea level dropped, the lakes dried up gradually and creating salty hollows and the sulphate of lime evaporated and became loose, powdery gypsum. The shape of Birridas is circular or oval and range from 100 m to 1 kilometer wide. They normally comprise of a central, raised platform ringed by a moat-like depression. The central section corresponds to the level of the water table during the late Pleistocene Period, about 10 000 years ago. Today, during very high winter tides or after heavy rains, when the groundwater level is raised, these moats fill with water to a shallow level.

Most birridas retain water for more than a few months following rain, and at those times, dormant eggs hatch and the birridas teem with brine shrimp, horse-shoe crabs and other invertebrates. They deliver a feast for wading birds such as red-necked stints and bar-tailed godwits that have migrated to Shark Bay from as far away as Siberia. Various birridas are connected to the sea by channels and receive seawater as well, where they form shallow bays. These bays are extremely imperative for fish breeding and nursery areas, although most birridas at Shark Bay are isolated, but are common in Francois Peron National Park where there are over 100 on the east coast of the Peron Peninsula. You can see birridas when driving around the park, however to appreciate the shapes and sheer number of birridas it is paramount to take a flight.

Source: Amusing Planet 

Peculiar Tree in the Rock of Wyoming

This is a peculiar tree and located right in the middle of Interstate 80, between Cheyenne and Laramie, in southeast Wyoming. The tree actually is a limber pine, which is common to the area, but this one seems to be growing out of a solid granite boulder. You will observe upon closer inspection, that it’s really growing out of a crack in the rock, owing to which the tree is stunted and twisted but is still going strong. This trivial tree has spellbound the travelers since the first train rolled past on the Union Pacific Railroad. It is believed that the builders of the original railroad diverted the tracks somewhat to pass by the tree as they laid rails across the Sherman Mountains in 1867-69. The train used to stop here while the locomotive firemen "gave the tree a drink" from their water buckets. The railroad moved numerous miles to the South in 1901 and the abandoned grade became a wagon road. Then in 1913, the old Lincoln Highway came by the Tree Rock, and by the 1920′s, the Lincoln Highway gave way to U.S. Highway 30. Lastly, in the 1960′s, Interstate 80 was built, and Tree Rock was assured a large audience for years to come. The tree is now surrounded by a spiky fence to keep it, and a little parking area is close for travelers to stop and take pictures. No one knows exactly how old the tree is, but Limber Pines can live as long as 2000 years.