Blue Ridge Mountains: Mystery Revealed!

Posted by cocoNUT on July 26th, 2007 4 Comments

The massive mountains that frame Charlottesville’s beautiful sunsets have intrigued me ever since I came to cville. I asked how they could be so blue during a party last weekend and no one could really answer…until now! This Biopact article explains why:

The Australian Blue Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains (photo) in the Eastern United States are so called because of the spectral properties of the huge amounts of isoprenes emitted from the trees growing there. Although a positive correlation has been observed between leaf temperature and isoprene emission in plants, the physiological role of isoprene emissions, which is clearly quite costly to the plant, has been under vigorous debate

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4 Responses to “Blue Ridge Mountains: Mystery Revealed!”

  1. 26 Jul 2007 at 3:35 pm1Stormy said:

    I don’t know about our lovely mountains here, but on my honeymoon to Australia we spent a few days in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney. Our tour guide said that it was the oils from the eucalyptus leaves that made the mountains appear blue.

    Oh, and I can’t get the link to the article to work. So maybe that’s what the article is saying.

  2. 26 Jul 2007 at 4:35 pm2Stormy said:

    I’d edit if I could, but I got the link to work now. Thanks!

  3. 27 Jul 2007 at 8:48 am3cocoNUT said:

    No worries. I heard the same thing from an Australian so it was a breath of fresh air to get the scientific explanation. I would guess that eucalyptus trees have a high amount of isoprenes?!?

  4. 27 Jul 2007 at 8:59 am4Mr. Bingley said:

    Who’s laughing at Uncle Ronnie now?

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