How was Blue Lake formed?

During the dormant years, ground water percolated into the underground channels and mixed with the hot and possibly molten lava at depth. The resultant explosions caused the large craters that are obvious today, containing Blue, Valley and Browne Lakes.



People Also Ask

A sacred site and the center of Taos religious life, Blue Lake became part of the Carson National Forest in 1906. The Forest Service opened the area to the American public soon after but also to timber interests. As early as 1350 AD, Pueblos from Taos had farmed lands watered by rivers flowing from Blue Lake.

MORE DETAILS

Blue Lake crater, one of the least known Holocene volcanoes of the Oregon Cascades, is a series of at least three overlapping explosion craters along a NE trend slightly east of the crest of the Cascade Range.

MORE DETAILS

Blue Lake Regional Park It provides many wonderful opportunities for boating, fishing and swimming, and makes a beautiful backdrop for hundreds of family picnics, community events and special programs throughout the year.

MORE DETAILS

Factors such as water depth and how the nearby land is used also matter. Lake color depends in part, too, on what's in the water. Compared with blue lakes, green or brown lakes have more algae, suspended sediment and organic matter. That's according to Xiao Yang.

MORE DETAILS

Scientists attribute the lake water's clarity to its passage underground from Lake Constance, which filters out nearly all the particles suspended in the water. Its clarity reveals water's natural blue-violet colour.

MORE DETAILS

Crater Lake partially fills the collapsed caldera of the ancient Mount Mazama Volcano. The caldera is a bowl-shape depression of about 1,219 m (4,000 ft) deep. The maximum depth of Crater Lake recorded at the time of the July 2000 multibeam survey was 594 m ( 1,949 ft).

MORE DETAILS

Recent research by NIWA scientists reveal that Blue Lake, in Nelson Lakes National Park, has extreme visual clarity, perhaps only exceeded worldwide by certain ocean waters, such as those in the SE Pacific near Easter Island.

MORE DETAILS