It may look like a stunning rainbow of colour, but the psychedelic hue of this hot spring in Yellowstone National Park, is a result of years of unintended vandalism by visitors.
Once a brilliant shade of blue, the Morning Glory pool’s appearance has altered dramatically since the 1950s, thanks to an accumulation of coins, rubbish and natural debris.
The pool has been dubbed the Fading Glory, due to the transformation from its original colour to the yellowy-green hue it has today.
It is estimated that the destruction of the hot spring has been building up for decades.
Research by Montana State University and Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany helped to create a model that could depict the hot spring’s colours from over a century ago, when it was less frequented by visitors.
Now nearly three million tourists flock to Yellowstone National Park, compared to the one million in the 1940s, which has led to the build-up of debris in the pool.
As the underwater vents started to get clogged up, water circulation was affected, decreasing the temperature of the waters and causing a migration of the orange-coloured bacteria towards the centre.
Adam Hoffman from Science Friday said: ‘Pigments produced by swaths of those microbes—called microbial mats—are responsible, at least in part, for the brilliant yellows, greens, and oranges that now tinge Morning Glory and other thermal pools in Yellowstone.’
