Near the south end of the Salton Sea, California has a bubbling mud hole that appears to have looked at roads, rail lines, and pipelines and decided: those belong to me now.
The Niland Geyser is the kind of thing California does better than anyone: a geological oddity, a public works problem, a vaguely apocalyptic roadside attraction, and a metaphor with bubbles. It is not fast. It is not dramatic. It is just a nasty little Earth burp moving through the desert with the confidence of a creature that understands eminent domain better than we do. Soon, a society to protect it will appear.
The landscape near the south end of the Salton Sea hosts a cluster of mudpots that never stop bubbling. It’s one of the deserts strangest and most unpredictable natural phenomena. Some are small and sputtering, others are massive and disruptive, and one in particular is on the move, destroying nearby roadways and even rail lines.
But what causes these unusual geothermal features and how did one become a major threat to infrastructure? We’ll take a deep dive into what mudpots are, how the Niland Geyser came to be, why its on the move, and what experts are doing to mitigate the damage.
The desert is full of wonders, and a few of them are trying to eat the railroad.
The mud pots around the bottom end of the Imperial Valley always fascinated me, although I've never got to this one. There's quite a group of them at the Davis Schrimpf Seep Field at the SE of the Salton Sea - though from decades-old memories, it is a pretty miserable hot, dusty, muddy, smelly walk to get close to them.
These aren't actually geothermal features, they're driven by carbon dioxide rather than boiling water. Water and carbon dioxide are rising up along a zone of compression and liquifying the sediments to produce goop. Why the Niland Geyser moves is not clear as most of these features stay in one place. Maybe it wants to go swim in the Salton?