Circular island in a lake in Colombia.

Perfectly circular island in Colombian lake..kmz (766 B)


The lake is remote and a look at it shows a surprising circular island. Is it created by humans or is it a natural feature? 




There are other natural circular islands in the world caused by water or air currents collecting floating vegetation and then rotation of the mass tends to give it a circular shape. 


You can read a discussion of this feature in the old Google Earth Community HERE. And of course you are encouraged to reply to this post in this forum.

There is a lake near me called Lake Yarbo that has a similar thing, it has bounced around and changed size over time.

If you view historical imagery you can see that at one point the imagery over it was split from 2 different times and was on opposite sides of it Lake Yarbo Island.kmz (745 B)

May 17, 2015 13:19:41 GMT shadowdragon said:

There is a lake near me called Lake Yarbo that has a similar thing, it has bounced around and changed size over time.
If you view historical imagery you can see that at one point the imagery over it was split from 2 different times and was on opposite sides of it

Thanks for the great example shadowdragon. I've been waiting for that Colombian lake imagery to update for years now, but it's still stuck in 2010. Finding a similar lake in the good ol' USofA where imagery is much more frequently updated is a real bonus. We can see how the floating island and the lake each help to shape each other. I'm willing to bet with so many little lakes in Florida that there are other examples nearby. Having said that I took a quick look nearby and found a few other examples, but ones not as perfectly formed.


That example in Historical Imagery which is right on the margins of two imagery sets is great.  

Timothy Whitehead, author or the Google Earth Blog, posted an extensive compilation of other circular floating islands around the world. It's well worth a look and a download of the kml file HERE.

These remind me of the ice discs that are occasionally seen, such as this one in North Dakota in 2013. I had no idea there were "dirt discs," too, and those lakes look perfect for the formation of them. 



AP video:


(Posted on the oldGEC)
Rotating ice disk.kmz (969 B)