Salt Pond Palette

Salt Pond Palette is an original illustration set in Coastal Salt Ponds, California. It lies in mid-latitudes, where the climate is warm-summer mediterranean.

A patchwork of evaporation ponds in rose, orange, yellow-green and teal, seen straight down from above, each pond a single flat colour. A fine white network of levees divides them. One channel connects the system to open water at the edge.

Why are the salt ponds different colours?

The colours are biology: as seawater concentrates from pond to pond, different salt-tolerant microbes take over, each with its own pigment. So the palette is a map of salinity, running in sequence toward the final crystallising pans. This only works where the climate is dry and sunny for months and the coast is flat enough to build shallow ponds.

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