In this post I will show you a natural wonder that you may not have seen before. With lots of pictures you will get a good overview, lets get started!

Limestone tuff

Near Wolfsbron, Bavaria, the Steinerne Rinne is a limestone tuff. The channel is moss-covered trough about 130 meters long, up to 160 centimeters high and up to 160 centimeters width. The water rises above the source horizon from a well, which is located in a source niche about seven meters deep. After about 30 meters of flat course, the stream leaves the source niche and forms the stone channel.

The stream from the well

The winding channel starts

The winding channel is pierced by several smaller waterfalls. The dam itself lies on an arched tuff fill. This is initially quite narrow and thin, but becomes up to 60 meters wide downhill and extends up to 8 meters deep into the earth. This largely invisible part was created over thousands of years by the constant shifting of the creek bed.

Limestone tuffs come in various morphological forms as large tufa deposits, sinter terraces, tuff cascades or, as here, as limestone troughs. Such channels are always tied to sources whose water has a particularly high lime content, which it has absorbed when limestone has seeped through. Small, but constantly flowing springs create such stone channels under favorable circumstances.

The groundwater cannot seep in deeper due to the underlying water-strewn layer of the ornamental clay and is directed laterally to the source outlet.

Waterfalls and quick flow

The water temperature at the source fluctuates by eight degrees. At the source outlet, the water is relieved of pressure, mixed with the air and at the same time changes in the ambient temperature. Some of the carbon dioxide dissolved in the water escapes, causing lime to precipitate out of the water, which, favored by moss and other plant parts, settles on the channel bottom. Certain algae are able to precipitate the lime dissolved in the water. The branched mosses collect the precipitated lime. Algae and mosses cause the upward growth of the stone gutter on the initially flat sintered surface. The mosses find their cheapest habitat on the edge of the stream bed in a humid and calcareous environment. In order to always get enough sunlight for their growth, they always have to grow up or to the side out of the incrustation caused by the lime precipitation. The algae, however, prefer to live on the bottom of the trough; the solid lime deposited by them seals the channel down and to the side. In this way, they channel the watercourse. As long as the water supply between the spring and the stone channel is not interrupted, it grows continuously, every year by a few millimeters.

The end

Camera: Canon EOS 200D
Lens: Tamron 70-210 mm F/4 Di VC USD and Tamron 10-24 mm F/3.5-4.5 Di II VC HLC
Edit: darktable

See you next time! / Bis nächstes Mal!

Thank you for your attention! / Danke für Deine Aufmerksamkeit!

Original content by

        Schaman Gerbert