- I'm Matt Covington from the University of Arkansas
and I also study and map caves.
One of the types of caves I've gotten interested in recently
is a cave in glaciers.
We went to the Arctic, up to Svalbard,
and went inside of caves that form in the ice.
And there we were using some new mapping techniques
that we're developing.
Actually creating a full 3-D scan of the cave
instead of just making measurements and surveying
a line and sketching the features, we create a full model.
And we've been doing that, initially, with a video game
controller, the X-Box Kinect, which is not very expensive
compared to most science equipment,
but basically it's a really cheap 3-D scanner
that we don't have to worry about destroying in the cave
in all the mud and the water.
So there's still a lot of things that we don't
understand about how caves form.
And creating these 3-D models allows us to make
really precise measurements of the shapes of the caves.
And as a cave scientist, we actually use those shapes to
read the story of the formation of the cave.
There's certain types of cave features that
their size, for example, relates to how fast the
water was flowing when the cave formed.
And so we can read those stories off the walls
and start to learn more about some of the mysteries
of cave formation that scientists haven't yet figured out.
- Wow. Mapping caves is really interesting.
Hey does the water look kinda green to you from there?
That means the water from above the ground,
where we started this morning, flows right through here.
- That's right.
- So where does all of this water go
as it continues on its journey?
- [Narrator] Well it continues to the underground
cavern and resurfaces at springs and wells.
And like we said, that's the water the people use
to drink , and for agriculture, and recreation.
And it's important to know where this water flows.
- Wow, that is pretty interesting.
This whole geologic tour you took us on totally rocked.
Alright, hey John. Let's get back and see what
direction in rest of the research team have been doing.
- Yeah?
- Hey cool.
- Bye guys.
- Later. Thank you.