November, 2022.
Hannah Brewster’s favorite place to skate is the Palmer Hay Flats and Rabbit Slough. Her pet project is trying to find all of the sneaky connections between larger bodies of ice.
I followed Hannah on a new loop but we skidded to a halt when we found this crazy camouflage ice:
About the only thing I can say with confidence about this texture is that the large puzzle pieces are typical crystal shapes. Each polygon is an individual crystal of ice.
The coloring is a function of bubble density or size (white = many bubbles, dark = few). This doesn’t make any sense to me … why would different crystals have different bubble density? I assume the bubbles are due to photosynthesis (not methane).
My best guess is that it has something to do with crystal orientation and solar radiation, but lake ice crystals are typically oriented with their c-axes sub-vertical … so … not much variation.
There is an inch or so of clear ice on top of the texture. This ice might be from a high tide or melt.
Any ideas?
I went back a few days later and chipped through the ice (about 6 inches) to confirm that the water was very shallow … maybe 12 inches of water over deep organic muck. I tasted the water and it was very salty. Unfortunately, the texture was almost impossible to see under a new rain/slush crust:
Hannah’s Loop
And how did Hannah’s loop turn out? See for yourself!
This is above my pay grade, but maybe the differing orientation of ice crystals causes different degrees of polarization? Google has a few hits for papers looking at how polarization of light affects rates of photosynthesis and decomposition with some evidence it can under have an impact under conditions that would fit here.
Are there other degassing processes in muck? Or methane released as tiny bubbles instead of large (I think of them as only being large).
I didn’t dig around too much in the much … it was extremely organic … stinky. But it wasn’t obvious that there was stuff growing on the bottom (for photosynthesis).
Thanks for looking deeper in our wonderful land and winter.
Beautiful photos.I love skating over frozen water and am amazed by the different forms and structures..