Light, color, and distance

Lately, I have been a little bewildered by my apartment's view of the golf course across the street. When I look at the golf course through the window, I can see the wide field adn the trees in the background, but for some reason the color seems off. Although the grass is a very bright green right next to the street, in the distance the grass seems to change color, but this doesn't seem to be from natural causes. The coloring of the trees also seems off. The trees and grass in the distance seem to almost have a whitish haze over them, making them lighter colored than the closer foliage. This seems odd because the fact that they are in an open space would mean that more light is hitting them, which I would expect wound make them brighter. My only guess is that this lighter color is due to reflection. Since a golf course needs to have high quality grass, I would guess that the grass gets watered often and thus would probably still have some water droplets on it. My guess is that this affects the reflection of light in some way, possibly allowing it to reflect more colors and give a whiter color. However, this doesn't seem right because the trees would not have the same amount of water on them. I also can guess that this fading of color is just due to the distance, but I do not know that for sure. This made me wonder how distance could be applied to theatre and studio art, and I realized that designers and painters generally use a color change to signify distance. I would just like to know how this works exactly so that I can use the technique in my Our Town project.