What are those colored areas south of San Francisco?

Google Farms™

To be honest I’m not sure, but I can guess that they’re varieties of Rapeseed plants.

If you zoom out they go from Orange to blue. I saw something similar happen happen the other day in Oregon on google maps. I’m not sure if they are blocking stuff out. Maybe it is a new way of blocking out a military bases? They used to just blur stuff.

I used the street view and couldn’t make out what was there.

But I would love it if someone familiar with the area could tell us what is there. I’m curious now too.

edit :: and I will send this to nikipedia. She lives in the bay area and might know.

I believe the area you are asking about (the rust colored area) is the Cargill Salt production facility in San Francisco Bay. The blue area is the southern end of the bay.
http://www.cargill.com/sf_bay/tour.htm

There’s a type of bacteria called halophilic that grows only in very high concentrations of salt—as the water evaporates, the color changes.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kap_cris/2373075936/

I agree with Seesul. I’ve driven past there and I believe it is salt evaporation flats. Not sure why the color changes when you zoom out. Maybe the higher resolution photos were taken at a different time than the more zoomed out photos?

I just flew over them the other day as the plane approached the San Francisco airport for landing. The colors on the google map are pretty accurate – at least it seemed so from my airplane window. I wondered the same thing myself – it looked so unnatural and weird and beautiful at the same time.