Questions.
- Tell me who you are sending inforamation in for. (If you dont send the answers to far apart from your logs you may have them deleted, so try and keep them close together).
- Look close at the travertine deposits in the area are they similar in color or do they vary?
- Look at locations where the water is not flowing, are there more pisoids than where the water is flowing?
- The interclast shelves (look at least 20' or more from the wellhead), are they even in size or do they vary greatly?
- Add a photo of you from the location or of an identifiable item (paper with trackable name). Posting a photo pulled from the internet, or photoshopped will result in instant deletion.
If you look at the other cache here it will talk about the geyser itself. The water that erupts from this geyser is full of sulfer, carbon dioxide, and many disolved minerals. The highest concentration of those being calcium carbonate.
Pisoids
As the water flows underground it becomes supersaturated with minerals. Calcium carbonate makes up the majority of what disolves along with some iron. The pisoids develop their coatings tumbling inside the well vent and are expelled during eruptions. Upon erupting to the surface the calcium carbonates can start to attach to other materials and start to form little round balls. These build up in time to be a little larger in diameter as they bounce around. Layer after layer builds up. If they are under 2mm in diameter they are called Ooids, larger and they are called pisoids.
Interclasts
Eventually as these pisoids build up they get heavy enough that they do not bounce around in the water and will start to settle to the bottom and form interclasts. The minerals in the water will start to cement small amounts of the pisoids, and other remains together. These small particles will build up. In the hot environment the slow flowing water can evaporate and increase the rate at which the minerals are deposited. These tend to form small shelves that trap some water and the high spots increase evaporation at those points, increasing deposits at those points.
Travertine
Eventually those deposits become fairly solid. As the deposits get thicker and thicker the deposits can build up. The stone that is left behind is usually porus, and may have many cavities in it. This stone is referred to as travertine.
Colors
The colors of the deposits can be from a few different things. The iron that comes out of the well can be deposited and will rust. Iron oxide has a red color that makes up much of the color of this desert area. It is also formed by a type of bacteria that causes the iron to rust an ochre color, it is called Leptothrix. Varying the iron and the bacteria can result in different colors from a yellow to a deep red.
Refererences
Barth, Jennifer - Crystal Geyser, Utah: Active Travertine Deposits of a Cold-water Carbon Dioxide-driven Geyser and Related Ancient Deposits of the Little Grand Wash Fault
Jennifer A. Barth - CRYSTAL GEYSER, UTAH: PETROGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF ACTIVE TRAVERTINE DEPOSITS OF A COLD-WATER, CARBON DIOXIDE DRIVEN GEYSER