Why are some of the Lakes in Russia RED? What would cause that?

[Up2Late]

I was looking at some RAW Images from NASA's MODIS Satellite "Terra," When I noticed 2 lakes, East of the Volga River that are RED, here some link, Click the thumbnails to goto the MODIS links:



If you look to the East of the nearly angle turn in the Volga River, you can see the Red Lakes.



This smaller thumbnail goes to the RAW image I was looking at, they can be view at 4km, 2km, 1km, 500m, 250m resolutions. You can't see much (re: the lakes) until you get to the 500m or 250m resolutions.

[TaleWgnDg]

1. That's a hell of a lot of red food dye #28. geesh! . . . n/t

[rug]

2. No kidding.

I thought Reagan took care of all that.

[punpirate]

3. My first guesses would be...

... algal blooms, spoilage from mining tailings or industrial waste dumped into them.

[ogradda]

4. Could it be some kind of algae?

Pollution?

[mcscajun]

5. The Volga has been dead for some time...

...and there's a high level of pollution streaming from it into nearby lakes, ponds, and other water sources.

Could be just pollution, or red-celled algae feeding on it.

Either way, it ain't good. I've seen good, and it never looks like that.

[Up2Late]

7. Where did you hear that the Volga was Dead? I just read on the...

...same NASA sight, that it has lots of Fish, especially down in the Caspian Delta. Here's a link (Click on the picture):

[mcscajun]

8. Perhaps "dead" was a premature usage..."dying" might be better.

I'm not generally given to hyperbole, but Google "Volga radioactive chemical" and you'll see that the area drained by the Volga contains enormous amounts of unremediated pollutants, and there have been large-scale fishkills in the Volga and Caspian.

There might still be fish there; I wouldn't eat 'em.

[Codeine]

6. never mind

deleted

[DemBones DemBones]

9. Communism, of course.

We always did call the Commies "Reds" you know.

:evilgrin:

[TaleWgnDg]

10. . . .

.


.

[DemBones DemBones]

11. Heh heh. . . SERIOUSLY, it could be that they have

a massive overpopulation of Euglenoid protists. Remember the three protists always shown in biology books: Amoeba, Euglena, Paramecium?

Euglena are protists that ingest food but can photosynthesize when conditions demand that they produce their own food -- very handy. They're green (chlorophyll in their chloroplasts) but they have red "eye spots" and have been known to be so numerous in a pond as to make the water appear red.

There are probably other protists or algae that can cause this, I remember there's a red alga that's found in snow and everyone's heard of the red tides in the Gulf of Mexico. . . I can look through my phycology books (that's phycology, not psychology) but the red color of these lakes could also be caused by chemicals, either naturally present or somehow added by human action.

[Massacure]

12. My first thought was either algae or iron.

[Up2Late]

14. This bit of info might help, that's not snow or ice on those other lakes

that's Salt.

That is a very dry area, and because of recent changes in the Caspian and Aral Seas, those mostly dry lakes are leaching large amounts of Salt from the ground. The totally dry lakes there they call "salt pans."

[enki23]

13. artifacts?

.

[SteppingRazor]

15. First, are you certain the two images are lakes?

If so, then the pinkish hue could be caused by any number of things, from Red Tide to extremely heavy iron deposits (which probably means industrial waste)

[On the Road]

16. The River Downstream from Angel Falls

and the whole tupa area in southern Venezuela are very dark red -- almost the color of coca-cola. It's from the high iron content of the runoff. I think some of the swamps in the pine barrens of southern NJ have high iron for a different reason.

Not saying any of this is related to the Volga.

[Ediacara]

17. It could be numerous things

I am looking in an atlas right now and it appears that the numerous small lakes to the east of the Volga on the Qazaq-Russian border are all salt lakes. The two red-colored lakes in particular are El'ton to the west and Aralsor to the east. The white blotchy areas aren't necisarily salt pans, some of them, especially the very large one just south of the two lakes on the Qazaq side of the border is (or was) aparently swampland, so the white could be a reflection of the sun. As for the red color... I agree with previous posters that it could be due to algal or other organismal blooms, but could also be due to high hematite soils (the Colorado River is a similar shade of red-brown due to hematite in the rocks it cuts through). Additionally, there are ergs in the eastern part of the image, so the red could be airborne hematite dust blown toward them.