- You have an elevator ride with one of these students.
You're gonna tell them, what's important about caves,
in sort of a quick, condensed version.
Can you help us with that?
- I got this one.
- Okay, sweet.
- So we talked about water all along,
we've kind of mentioned water.
In 40 percent of the US and 25 percent around the world,
water comes from cool places like this,
where there are caves called karst areas,
which was one of our glossary words
from the first CavesLIVE.
And so, caves are super important to protect
because our drinking water comes out of caves,
as well as water for recreation,
and water for unique plants and animals that depend on
water beneath the surface of the earth or at springs
where that water from the subsurface
comes out at the surface.
So, water's a big, big part of why caves,
cave systems, and karst areas as a whole
are very important.
- [Host] I'd like to ask that question of all of you.
- Yeah, so they're important because they hold sediments,
as you can see, there's sediments in the caves.
Speleothems, are also a type of sediment,
so those sediments are records for us
to study the climate in the past.
So we learn about the temperature,
we learn about the rainfall,
and we can make predictions
of what's going to happen in the future.
They are comparable to tree ring records.
I'm sure you guys have heard about tree rings,
or deep sea sediments or even glacier records.
So we can find the similar type of signs,
and then correlate it
with what's happening outside the cave.
- And Lima, that is very important,
because with the sediments,
that's what protects the animals that died,
and then preserved them
so that we can find them later and study them.
Usually, the animals, maybe that are found in caves,
may not have been preserved anywhere else.
And so, we've got this cave that helps preserve and
promote science and gives us a lot more information
about what the climate was like,
and what was influenced by the caves, yeah.
- Thank you.
- Yeah.
- Alright, I appreciate that elevated speech
because 'cause we wanted you all to remember
all the things that are important about caves.