Sandy Tufas

Sand tufa formations at Mono Lake, California

At Navy Beach on Mono Lake, the less well-known tufa formations known as sand tufa are abundant. As contrasted to a tufa that originally formed in the alkaline lake water, these tufas originally were formed under lake sand.

The scale of the photograph may be deceiving: this formation is about knee-high to most adults. They're much smaller than the fresh-water tufas.