Boiling Mud Pot Landscape

This is a landscape consisting of ponds filled with boiling water and thin mud. The mud is mainly composed of hydrothermally altered clay mixed with alunite, iron oxide and iron sulphide. The mud is black, but some boiling mud pots are milky white, whitish, grey, yellow, brown, red, purple or orange-red, resembling a pot of mixed paints. Gas emissions from the boiling mud pot are common, which cause the mud to splash from the pond surface. Boiling mud pots are also called mud-frog pots. When the temperature is below the boiling point, it is called a hot-mud pot. If the mud is viscous, the splashed mud tends to accumulate around the air holes to form small and low cones like mud volcanoes with gas emissions on the top. Boiling mud pots are common in volcanic areas and are always associated with geysers or hot springs.