(pop music)
(mysterious electronic music)
- Alright, it's time
and unless you've been living under a rock somewhere
for the past few months.
You know what time I'm talking about.
It's time for CavesLIVE.
Hey everybody, my name is Amtchat Edwards,
and I'm the Educational Specialist
with the United States Forest Service.
My job is to make sure that we're learning things,
and having fun in the process.
So, fingers crossed, it all goes well today.
Alright,
We are in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia,
in a place called Luray Caverns.
This is actually one of the largest caverns,
the largest cave...
(crowd whispers)
...systems, (laughs) the largest cave systems
in the Eastern United Sates.
And if you look around,
these chambers actually began dissolving
over 400 million years ago.
So, this wasn't made overnight.
And if you look,
you'll notice that most of these structures around here are
reddish and orange, brownish color,
that's coming from iron present in the soil above.
And it trickles, as the water and raindrops trickle down,
they bring it through here and have painted
and decorated these walls this fabulous, beautiful color.
We didn't stage this for you, this is natural.
400 million years in the making. How about it?
Alright, one of the things that you'll see
a little bit later is actually manmade.
There's a musical instrument, an organ,
that will play a little bit later,
so stay tuned for that.
Caves have all sorts of interesting things
that you'll find in them,
the more that you get out and see,
you'll notice that they're beautiful, natural formations
and there are caves all across the country,
so I'm encouraging you to come visit.
After you see this program,
you're gonna wanna go even more.
But right now, I'm even saying, "Come visit."
And speaking of visitors,
I have a bunch of friends here from Rippon Middle School.
Hey.
(crowd cheers and applauds)
Yeah.
Welcome. I'm so glad you all could come.
They will actually be asking questions
of our fabulous Scientists,
which we just happen to have three right here.
Let me introduce.
We've got Dr. Joanna Kovarik.
She's the National Cave and Karst Program Lead
for the USDA Forest Service.
We have Barb Beasley.
A Paleontologist with the USDA Forest Service,
and we have Limaris Soto,
- Hola.
- Or Lima.
- She's a Geologist with the National Park Service.
Now, these are a few of our Scientists,
we have a bunch more that are not gonna be on screen.
They are equally as important
and equally as awesome.
Right?
I'm going to introduce them because they're gonna be
answering your questions
and putting them into the online forums.
So, they're not here with us, but they are.
We've got Gretchen Baker,
She's an Ecologist with the National Park Service
and one of our stars from the original CavesLIVE.
We have Dr. Hazel Barton,
Professor at the University of Akron.
She's also a star of the IMAX movie,
'Journey into Amazing Caves'.
We have Fernando Hernandez,
a graduate student in Hydrogeology
at Western Kentucky University,
also one of our stars from the original CavesLIVE.
We have Ben Miller,
a Karst Hydrologist with the U.S Geological Survey.
We have Shona Pierce,
and Archeologist with the Forest Service,
Lizandra Nieves-Rivera,
she's a Forest Soil Scientist with the Forest Service.
So many different types of Science right?
(chuckling)
We have.. that's why I'm using notes.
(chuckling)
Okay, Dr. Ben Tobin is a Hydrologist
with the National Park Service.
Dr. Steve Taylor is a Research Associate
with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science,
one of our awesome partners as well.
An associate Research Professor at Colorado College.
Dr. Sybill Amelon,
is a Research Wildlife Biologist with the Forest Service.
And Dr. Risa Carlson,
Archeologist with the Forest Service.
I haven't actually done the math,
but I think that's a ton of Scientists.
(chuckling)
Maybe, okay.
So, you're probably trying to figure out
how can you submit questions.
Well if you're on the CavesLIVE website,
you can immediately post those there.
Also if you're in... on the Facebook environment,
you can post your questions directly
on our page there as well.
Or emailing to FieldTrips@pwnet.org.
And all those three channels will funnel to us here,
we'll answer them as best we can.