(upbeat music)
(adventurous music)
All right, it's time,
and unless you've been living under a rock somewhere
for the past few months,
you know what time I'm talkin' about,
time for CavesLIVE.
Hey everybody, my name's Amtchat Edwards
and I'm an Education Specialist
with the United States Forest Service.
My job is to help make sure that we're learning things
and having fun in the process,
so fingers crossed it all goes well today.
All right.
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 systems, ha ha,
the largest cave systems in the eastern United States.
And if you look around,
these chambers actually began dissolving
over 400 million years ago.
So, you know, 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 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?
All right.
One of the things that you'll see
a little bit later is actually manmade.
There's a musical instrument, an organ,
that we'll 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 are 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 sayin' come visit.
And speaking of visitors,
I have a bunch of friends here
from Rippon Middle School, hey!
Hey!
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. Johanna 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 Limarise 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 onscreen.
They are equally as important and equally as awesome.
I'm gonna introduce them
because they'll be answering your questions
and putting them into the online forum,
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, a professor
at the University of Akron.
She's also a star of the IMAX movie,
Journey Into Amazing Caves.
We have Fernando Hernadez, 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, an 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?
We have, that's why I'm using notes.
(scientists laughing)
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,
and 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.
(scientists laughing)
Okay, so you're probably trying to figure out
how to submit questions.
Well, if you are 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 as we can.
Sound fun?
Okay, sweet.
How about we start with a question
from somebody in the room?
Sounds good.
(scientists agreeing)
We're ready.
All right, Rippon Middle School
is sending their first representative up.
Come on, let's see what you have.
So how are caves and cave systems formed?
Way to start us off.
How are caves and cave systems formed?
That's a great question,
that's such a great question to start us off with,
and as Amtchat said earlier,
when we first started the program, he gave us a hint, right?
He said that as water moves through the rock.
So for caves like this,
caves like the one we're standing in right now
here at Luray Caverns,
and caves in areas of the U.S. and around the world
that are made from limestone,
water interacts with the rock to dissolve away that rock
and carry it away and create these cavernous rooms
that we're standing in right here.
But there are other types of caves, as well.
Yeah, so we're here in a solutional cave, right?
And so Luray Caverns is a type of cave
that is called solutional cave.
But we have volcanic caves
and then we have talus caves that are formed
by rocks piling on top of each other,
or sea caves that form on shorelines
and glacial caves, those are important, as well.
Different type of caves.
Three different answers.
You okay with that?
Sweet, thank you.
(scientists laughing)
Thank you.
Anybody else from Rippon Middle School,
you wanna come?
Come on.
My question is is...
Do sudden events cause the caves to form
or are they developed over many years?
Good question.
You think like an earthquake opened this up,
is that what we're askin', something like that?
Let's see.
Also a really good question.
Amtchat gave us a hint to this, as well,
he said over 400 million years ago,
this cave started to form,
so many caves take a very long time to form.
It started out as something very small
and then, over lots and lots of years,
form these huge spaces,
but as Lima mentioned,
there are lots of different types of caves
and some take less time.
Yes, especially if they have, let's say, wave action.
If you're on the coast and you have the sea waves,
and then you also have mechanical action.
So some caves form faster,
but not fast enough for us to actually notice.
It will take a long time for us
to see a big chamber like this, millions of years.
And that's why we have to preserve and conserve them.
They're very valuable and took many, many years to form.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ameenah and Martin, for those questions.
Really appreciate you all.
You probably have some more, hang on.
We'll come back to you.
What I'd like to do is see if we have an online question
ready and available.
We have an online question?
Sweet.
We do, I'm taking this one.
Great.
Oh, you've got one, sweet, awesome.
Thank you, so this is from Miss Dornan's class
in Galesbury, Illinois.
Hello, Illinois!
(laughing)
How big does it have to be to be considered a cave?
Ooh, that is such a good question.
So, in terms of federal lands, where the Forest Service
and the National Park Service manage caves,
caves are defined
by the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act
and there's no quantitative measurement,
no number that we apply to a cave
in terms of how big it needs to be.
It just needs to be a naturally-occurring void space
or empty space like this under the surface of the earth.
However, in different states, they do have a number
they apply to that.
So for Missouri or Tennessee, where Barb is from,
they might say a cave need to be 30 feet long
or something like that in order to
actually be defined as a cave.
That's a great question.
So I can't consider a pothole in the street...
(Johanna laughing)
it's okay. It might be considered
a sinkhole.
(all laughing)
Karst feature.
A karst feature,
well thank you, all right.
We have another one.
This is from Anna, who's actually homeschooled
in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland.
Hey, I've been there before.
What's your most favorite cave?
And we're gonna have this cave cover its ears, hold on.
I think Mammoth Cave has been my favorite cave
because it's in Kentucky, so it's close to where
I did a geology field trip
and it's just monstrous, just like the name says,
mammoth, it is huge.
And you're a paleontologist.
And I'm a paleontologist that refers to the elephants
that used to be in North America.
Did you know elephants were in North America?
No?
Yes, yeah, come on.
(all laughing)
You too cold?
(all laughing)
So yes, mammoths and other elephants
were around in North America over 10,000 years ago.
I have to say Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
It's just a beautiful cave.
If you have the chance, go visit.
It's in New Mexico.
I'm kind of biased
'cause I work for the National Park Service,
but it's one of those wonders of the world.
Do you wanna say your favorite cave?
Well, actually, how about you, Amtchat?
All right, I've been in two caves,
I think I'm gonna say my favorite cave
is gonna be Atlanta Springs.
Yes!
It was awesome.
The folks there were great, and it was wild.
There were bats everywhere
and bat poop everywhere, but you know,
you look past that.
(Johanna laughing)
Because the cave is just so cool.
We're really happy there's bat poop there
because that means there's bats there.
It's great. There's life.
Yes, yes.
There is life.
Well, this question, we still have, yes,
okay, this one, what's the smallest area of a cave
you've ever passed through?
They want a story.
Oh, ooh.
Oh, I'm sorry,
and this one is from Collum from California.
Collum, that's a big question,
or a little question.
(scientists laughing)
All right, all right, I'll stop.
Gosh, the smallest space.
I don't know, what's the smallest,
so there are places in caves, when you're exploring,
where you have to crawl through
and you have to turn your head sideways
and push your pack ahead of you or drag it behind you
attached to your foot or something like that.
So that's pretty small,
where it takes, I can't even think of how long,
like the longest time I've spent in a small space like that,
but they're definitely small spaces that we pursue
to explore caves.
How about you two?
Do you have any small space experience underground?
Yes, in Florida.
(scientists laughing)
I thought there might be a good story.
Yeah, they're pretty tight
and you're pushing your backpack as you go
and you're like, "When is this going to end?
"It's getting kind of small."
So imagine crawling under your chair
and see how much space you have
to move from one side to the other,
not now, but when you go home.
(scientists laughing)
It's sort of the same feeling
of being in a tight, contained place.
Whew, people find fun in so many different ways.
(laughing)
Some people stick themselves
in tiny caverns. You never know.
Tell me your name again.
We've got, you wanna do a question?
My name is Maraki Illiga.
Well, welcome.
Okay, my question is how is the cave
still in good condition
even though it's been years since it has been found?
Good question.
Someone nailing these back to the ceiling,
is that what you're askin'?
(laughing)
Okay, got it (mumbles).
So caves have stewards, right?
We are all stewards of caves
and we all help to protect caves
through the different things that we do.
In the Forest Service and the National Park Service,
and then here at Luray, the owners of Luray Caverns,
since it's a privately-owned cave,
all take precautions and do things
to make sure that what we're doing on the surface
doesn't impact the cave below,
and they also have tour guides, which you may have seen,
or Forest Service or National Park Service employees
that talk to the visitors and tell them
not to touch formations and not to take them with them
so that other people can enjoy them
and scientists can study them.
Thank you.
Great question, thank you.
Come on up, you.
Sweet, you all are in the front row, so convenient.
So my question is what impact do caves have
on our daily lives?
I'm turnin' that way, thank you.
What's your name?
Lydia.
Thanks, Lydia.
So we're connected to caves in our daily lives
in lots of different ways.
For one, they capture our imagination, right?
Pretty cool, huh?
And then also, scientists who study caves
learn things about medicine like antibiotics,
how microbes interact with the environment
and how to utilize them in medicines,
which is a good question for some of scientists
answering questions online,
we have a microbiologist with us.
And then, also through water,
water comes from cave systems in some places,
so we interact with the water
that comes out of cave systems.
Very cool.
And people, as we talked about,
as Amtchat said, people are into
all kind of different things.
Some of us love recreating in caves
and crawling through small spaces.
You can do it every day
if you join this team of scientists one day,
hint, hint, hint, hint.
(scientists laughing)
Hint.
Did any of you want to jump in on that one
because we have a couple of questions
coming in from online?
Where do you want to go?
Thanks, Johanna, for giving,
look at this high-tech,
coming right in from online.
All right, this one is from Kristin Glasner
from Fillmore Middle School in Fillmore, New York.
What is the mineral composition of a cave?
We have learned about calcite and chemical weathering.
Is there calcite in this cave?
Yes, so part of the formation here, it's dolomite
which is calcium carbonate formed with magnesium,
but most of the cave is also limestone, which has calcium.
There are some formations that are a form of aragonite
and you can also have gypsum in caves.
So there are different kind of minerals
that you can find in caves.
In here, a lot of the speleothems are calcite.
Thank you.
I've got a second question.
It's from Vicky B. from Magnolia Middle School
in Joppa, Maryland.
What made you want to be a scientist?
I got this one.
(scientists laughing)
So my earth science teacher in third grade,
I don't know if you guys have an awesome teacher
maybe in sixth grade, third grade.
So I started doing Science Fair
and I joined the Science Club,
so if you guys have something like that,
you might wanna join.
And she took us caving,
she took us on our first wild tour
and we went caving and I realized I love rocks,
I love caves, that's what I want to do.
I don't know how I'm gonna do it,
and then I realized I could study geology,
but it was something that was calling me
since I was very, very young.
Yeah, and my fifth grade science teacher,
Miss Hamilton, I'm from West Tennessee
and our gravel is actually, our driveways and all,
loaded with fossils and she brought them in,
explained what fossils were,
and of course, we had a gravel driveway
and once I started noticing and recognizing
all the different kinds of animals
in fossils that are there,
I started bringing them in buckets
and bringing them into the house.
So most of the driveway ended up in the house.
And so, actually, that was my very first time
and introduced to these fossils,
and I have been in paleontology ever since.
I had a similar experience to Barb
with the buckets of rocks.
I grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Michigan, anybody?
(scientists laughing)
Yeah!
And I brought buckets of rocks back
from the shore of Lake Michigan.
My dad would take us out, we'd look for agates and fossils,
Petoskey stones and things like that, so yeah.
Very cool, thank you.
So it's interesting, the rich history that we have
and that we can learn by looking at the minerals
and things that are found.
We will actually jump to a video
so we can learn about the rich, cultural heritage
of the native indigenous peoples of this land
and how caves relate to their culture.
So how 'bout the video?
Hi, I'm Christopher Koeppel.
At the Forest Service, we have lots of lands
that we manage,
and most of those lands, if not all of those lands,
were once ancestral lands to Native Americans.
Now Native Americans have been here
on our continent for at least 15 to 17,000 years,
maybe even older
and they've been managing and using and enjoying
the resources of this great nation for millennia.
And many of those lands are now, of course,
managed by the Forest Service.
Now, we also have other resources
that other people like to enjoy,
so we need to balance our commitment to the American public,
but also to our Native American partners,
and in finding that balance,
we have to find a way that we can be respectful
of Native Americans' spiritual beliefs and religious beliefs
as well as what people come to our forests and recreate.
Now, I'm not Native American.
I work for the Office of Tribal Relations
and so when I speak to you today
about the sacredness of caves,
what I'm doing is I'm imparting the messages
that Native American tribes that partner with us
have asked that we remember.
Now, some caves and their relationship with Native Americans
go back millennia, and for many Native Americans today,
caves are sacred spaces.
In the Dakotas, along the Black Hills, are many caves,
one in particular called Wind Cave, that,
for the Lakota people, is their origin.
It is the place that they have told the Forest Service
they come from, millennia ago.
There are caves that have been explored
by Native Americans.
You may have heard of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.
Well, Native Americans have been exploring Mammoth Cave
and getting resources for at least 6,000 years.
That's a very, very long time ago.
Ancient Native Americans have put rock art on caves.
This can be pictographs.
This can be forms of animals, ancestral images,
plants, anything that's spiritually significant
to those people at that time.
And even though that was done a very long time ago,
it is still significant to Native Americans today.
For some Native Americans, caves can be origin places.
For others, they can be places where ancestors are resting.
For others, they can play an important part
in their oral history
and the tales the elders impart to the children.
So caves have been an important part,
spiritually and physically, of Native American culture.
In the past, certainly, and we talked about
a lot of the ancient uses of caves,
but they're also sacred places today.
They're part of a living, holistic, larger sacred landscape
that is significant to Native American tribes
and our partners who are tribal nations.
And at the Forest Service, we try and find a balance
and work with our tribal partners
to make sure that we respect that sacredness
and respect and balance the many uses
that people come to our forests to enjoy.
Sweet.
Quick questions from online.
By the way, thanks, Chris, for helping us with that video.
So quick questions from online.
This was from Davina from Magnolia.
Hi, again, from Magnolia Middle School in Joppa, Maryland.
Thanks again for watchin'.
How can you remember the difference
between a stalactite and a stalagmite.
Wait, wait, wait!
It's my time to shine, hold on.
So here we go.
(scientists laughing)
So stalactites are the ones
that are hanging tight to the ceiling,
all right, so picture that, they're holdin' on tight
and they're hanging down,
whereas stalagmites are the ones
that might get big and tall one day
from the drips that are falling down on them.
All right?
Yeah, (laughs) I had one.
All right, then I have another one from online.
This is from the sixth grade students
at Mesa View Elementary School in Grants, New Mexico.
What kind of equipment do I need to explore caves?
Well, you gotta start with a helmet,
you gotta protect your head, right?
And then you gotta have boots on.
We've all got boots on today.
Gosh, what else could you need?
Three sources of light.
Yes, three sources of light.
Elbow pads, knee pads, in case you have to crawl
like we talked about earlier.
And very important, you should always have
other people with you,
not just by yourself, you should go with a group of people.
I appreciate that you always bring back the important,
the people in caves, it's not just the resources,
it's the people that are all brought together.
The team.
They might help you get out of the cave.
Yes, in case you get lost.
Yes.
I got lost this morning.
(scientists laughing)
So, how about Barb?
Can we talk paleontology?
I know lots of people have questions
about, yup. Absolutely.
Just to tell you about,
a little bit about paleontology in caves.
Caves sometimes have very large openings
and they go deep and they provide a stable environment
at the same temperature and humidity,
and sometimes, a lot of animals,
large animals and small, will use the caves
as shelter to hide or to live throughout,
or just to hang out and then go outside
and bring in dinner.
So with this, one of the animals that is found in caves
is a giant ground sloth.
This is a claw, one claw, similar to your fingernail,
like a cat claw or whatever,
and this was from a giant ground sloth.
These animals became extinct
somewhere around 10,000 years ago
and they think that humans actually overhunted them
'cause their large and slow and they were easy to catch,
plus, since they were so big,
they threw a really big barbecue all of the time,
so it could feed a lot of people.
That's what I was picturing.
Yep, and so another animal that is also found in caves
and is big is an elephant.
Remember I mentioned elephants before?
Mammoths and mastodons lived in,
did not live in caves but the animals that predated on them
or would capture them and kill them
would actually bring body parts in to feed the family.
So we'll find a lot of this fossil material from elephants.
Have we ever found any fossilized toothbrushes,
'cause that thing is huge.
No, not yet, but we'll keep looking.
(scientists laughing)
You keep on digging, thank you so much, Barb.
Another online question.
This actually is from some of our friends in Ohio
from Maddox, a third grader
from Absorbent Minds Montessori School in Ohio.
The question is do you collect rocks from caves
and sell them?
Do you do the same with fossils?
Oh, no, we don't.
No, not at all.
Barb, you wanna talk about fossils?
Oh, oh, well, sure.
It actually depends on who owns the cave.
So if it's a federal, owned by or managed by
a federal land management agency,
that means the cave belongs to you,
and so we do not sell any fossils or anything
from the caves.
However, if it's from a private cave,
private ownership, then they may make that decision
to sell material that's from the cave.
But otherwise, for fossils, that's the answer.
We like to follow leave no trace principles, right,
so leave everything where you found it,
don't take anything out of the cave with you,
have no impact other than just your footprints.
So in Forest Service and National Park Service caves,
leave everything where it is,
appreciate it where it is so that somebody else
coming after you can do the same thing.
And be sure not to touch the formations
because they're very sensitive
and the oils from your hands
can prevent those stalagmites and stalactites from growing.
So we wanna be very careful when we're in a cave
not to knock down things, not to break things,
and if we see somebody that is breaking things,
let an adult know, let a park ranger know
or a Forest Service park employee so that
they can do the right thing
because we need to protect those resources
for future generations.
Thank you so much.
How about another question from Rippon?
Leslie.
What is the rarest animal found,
that you guys have found?
Can you repeat the question?
What is the rarest animal that you have found?
Rarest. Rarest animal
that we have found.
That may be a good question
for Barb. For Barb.
Since her animals are extra rare.
(scientists laughing)
I actually deal in wildlife,
prehistoric wildlife.
But any way, usually, I'm guessing, and it's pure guess,
is that they're the salamanders
and things that have gone completely white
and they're actually blind because there's no light.
And so I would assume that there's not many animals
that have become so dependent on the cave environment
that those would be rare.
I'm sure there's more, but that's my knowledge.
There you go, thank you.
Thanks, Leslie.
Hey, we're actually gonna put a pause on questions,
so if you have some more, hang on,
because we have a tour coming through.
This cave is actually a working cave,
a working show cave, and there's a tour group coming on.
Yeah.
Hi, now, you're safe, I promise.
You can walk through there if you'd like.
Just be careful of the mic.
(woman speaking)
If you look up that way,
you can see one of the pieces of it,
you'll see it.
(calming organ music)
The sound that you're hearing
is coming from the stalactite pipe organ.
It's actually the largest musical instrument in the world
and it's covering over 3 1/2 acres.
There's over five miles just of wires
running to make this thing work.
It took them a full three years to build
and they started back in 1954.
There are little small electronic mallets
that strike the stalactites
and they had to find the right ones
to make the right sound
and that's why it's spread out so far.
They had to find the right one, hit it,
make a little vibration,
and then little microphones pick that up.
And it's tuned, actually, to the concert pitch.
(calming organ music)
Thanks, Allison, for bringing your group through.
Hey, guys, thank you.
Thank you.
Johanna, you said you like caves for the people.
Check it out, this cave is actually drawing people.
Yeah, it's great, maybe some budding new cave scientists
in the group.
I saw some young ones.
Or concert pianists, concert organists (laughs).
So now you can say you heard a rock concert today.
(all laughing)
Okay, they got it, right, good.
Another question from Rippon.
Come on, bring it on.
Ooh, we got lots of hands comin' up.
I hope we have time to get to everybody, okay?
My name is Monica and my question is
why is it important to learn about caves?
Interesting, thanks, Monica.
That's a great question
as well. Why it's important.
Well, thank you, Monica.
So there's so many different reasons
why learning about caves is super important.
There's a lot we can learn from caves.
We learn about where our water can come from,
we can learn about past climates,
we can be inspired to make beautiful art,
so there's a whole range of reasons why.
Different ecosystems, so even though
you think this cave is bare
and there's only stalactites hanging from the ceiling,
there's many animals that use the cave to live here
and microbes.
And like Barb said, there are also fossils,
so caves are great repositories for different artifacts.
And we had found fossils that date from millions of years,
we're also finding baskets or different things
that other humans left behind
when they were living on caves
and it's important to preserve them.
So there is so much to caves,
not just the dark hole in the ground.
(scientists laughing)
Thank you for that question.
An interesting follow up,
this one came from online from Gilmore Academy,
'cause it's an interesting followup.
They're in Mills, Ohio, by the way.
Lots of Ohio love today.
Do think that there are plant and animal species
that we haven't discovered yet?
Absolutely.
We're always finding new things.
That's why it's always the best thing to do
is to be very careful if you ever enter a cave
and you happen to may be the first one
to always report it to the owner
or to a scientist or someone
because there may be something brand new that's in there.
And even though caves may not be named after people,
but fossils can be.
(Johanna laughs)
Remember that, so yeah.
Yeah, and there's so many caves around the world
that haven't been discovered yet.
There's still the possibility to find new caves
and with those caves, new species and new things
that live there in those environments, so...
Fascinating.
I have a couple of online questions.
How about this one?
Why are caves different temperatures?
And then the second part of that is
what is average, and what cave is the coldest
and what cave is the hottest?
That's a lot of questions, What is average?
By the way.
That depends where the cave is located.
So it's going to be the mean annual temperature
of the location of the cave, so around here,
it's 54 or 55 degrees.
And if we go to the tropics, I'm from Puerto Rico
so if we go down there, the caves are going to be warmer
because the mean annual temperature can be,
for the cave, in the 70s.
So it's gonna be hotter and you don't need
as many clothes.
So it depends.
If you're in the desert, the cave is gonna be warmer, so...
Yeah, and caves up high in the alpine
can have ice in them and you have to have
even more layers and clothes and hats
when you're mapping those caves, and so...
Yeah, Johanna used to work in Alaska.
I'm sure those caves were cold.
They were cold.
(scientists laughing)
All right, this one isn't coming from online,
but up here.
So you're in a cave in the desert.
Is it moist and damp like this one?
It depends on the mean rainfall for that area,
but for the cave to be formed,
they had to have enough rain
to be formed throughout the years.
Interesting.
Did we already do that?
I think we did (laughs).
Somebody asked how do you keep from getting lost.
The answer is to stick with them.
(scientists laughing)
Did you mention, Amtchat got a little lost this morning?
(scientists laughing)
Did we mention that?
(scientists laughing)
Focus, focus.
Okay, here we go, another question online.
Always go with somebody that knows where they're going.
(scientists laughing)
How do you join a caving club?
Oh, and that's a good followup
because Amtchat joined us as a caving club.
(scientists laughing)
But the National Speleological Society,
which is one of our Forest Service partners,
has caving clubs across the country, grottoes,
that welcome new members, teach them how to go caving,
teach them about cave conservation and ethics,
and often they lead trips for new cavers
so that they can explore in caves.
Also, you can always go out
to one of our National Caves Association partner caves
such as this cave here at Luray Caverns
and one of their great tour guides
will take you on a trip so that you can experience a cave
for yourself without any of that gear we talked about
like helmets and elbow pads, boots, those sorts of things.
So there's lots of different ways,
depending on what you're interest level is
and how adventuresome you are.
You wanna share the website?
Oh, yes, the website
for the National Speleological Society is
www.caves.org.
That's easy.
It's super easy.
It's like our website, minus the live part (laughs).
Cool.
So we've heard the terms caves, caverns.
I have a question of what is a cenote
and how do they form?
That's a good one.
I'll take it.
Bring it on.
(scientists laughing)
Cenotes are usually found in the Yucatan Peninsula
in Mexico and they are karst depressions,
so they're large depressions where the roof of the cave
has collapsed and they have steep walls
and usually they have water inside the cenotes.
And you have freshwater that's going to flow into the ocean
where you have saltwater.
So that's a cenote.
And it's a Mayan word.
They're beautiful. Okay, I'm tryin'
to picture that, cave, ceiling fell in.
Um-hm, and you have steep walls
and then there's water inside the cenote.
Can I swim in there?
Yes, of course, some people do.
(laughs) write that one down, folks.
Vacation.
(scientists laughing)
Let's take a question.
There's so many, I saw tons of hands goin' up.
I'm just gonna ask somebody from near the front
or I love the folks in the back, too, I promise.
Come out, what's your question, brother?
My question is---
Wait, wait, wait, one more time,
what's your name?
(scientists laughing)
My name is Dejuan and my question was
does the bats' echolocation get affected
by the people coming in here making noise?
Good question, does bats' sense of echolocation
get affected by people coming in here making noise?
That's a very good question.
Very good.
People can disturb bats, it's true.
Most of the time, in here,
we haven't really seen too many bats
when we've been walking around,
but in many caves, they tend to not let people
go into areas where bats are hibernating
or where bats like to roost
so that we can protect them,
so we don't mess with their hibernation
or mess with them trying to fly in and out of the cave
to go eat dinner at night.
Good question.
I was in a cave and there were bats flyin'
all over the place and they did not mind me at all,
they didn't care.
They were still doin' their bat business.
(scientists laughing)
It was fascinating, okay.
Did any one get in your hair?
Up close and personal, nope, they stayed outta my hair.
Yep, that's totally a myth.
It's a myth.
Bats don't like to mess with us,
they like to do their own thing.
Thanks for that question.
We will talk about careers.
How about that?
So, what in the world did you have to study
or what were you interested in
that really made you decide to do this kind of work?
Well, for me, I got involved in this
by working with the Student Conservation Association
when I was in my undergraduate,
which I think I have a fellow SCA member here, Amtchat,
but I got a job through Student Conservation Association
at Carlsbad Caverns National Park,
which is Lima's favorite cave.
And through that, I became interested in caves
and interested in how they form.
And then, through another job with the Forest Service
up in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska,
I became interested in how our activities on the surface,
our management activities impact water
in caves in the subsurface.
And so I studied geology and geography,
cartography, mapping caves, hydrology,
those sorts of things.
Interesting, similar story, different story?
What do you have, Barb?
Yup, yup, pretty much, maybe different.
I went to the University of Tennessee at Martin,
that was for my bachelor's, and so at first,
I took all the geology and biology and geography classes
and that's what gave me a very broad background
in geology and biology to be able to marry
those two programs within paleontology.
So I've been a paleontologist, fell in love with it
the first quarter, 'cause geology just came easy to me
and then, when we get into the third quarter
of historical geology, which had the fossils in it
and all the animals and all,
Dinosaurs! I was absolutely struck
'cause I love animals, too.
So it married the best thing, rocks and fossils (laughs).
So I, like Barb, I studied geology for my undergraduate,
but it wasn't until I took a class
about geomorphology and caves that I fell in love.
Our professor took us caving
and I knew I wanted to learn more about those caves
and so I started studying hydrology.
So if you're interested in caves,
you also need to learn what happens with the water.
You know, if you are interested in one science,
you might want to combine them.
So I also did some hydrology and eventually,
I did paleoclimate, which is something that
you might not think about it,
but we can get information about
what the climate was in the past studying caves,
and that's what I did.
So there are many things you can study.
You can study biology, you can study geology,
geography, hydrology.
So if you wanna be a scientist
and this is something that you like,
there are many opportunities for you.
That's the cool thing about science,
I mean, you can study anything.
Find out what you're interested in and study it.
Okay, all right, question from online.
This one is from Old Mill Middle School
in Millersville, Maryland.
Can caves disappear from being worn down so much
with water moving through it?
That's a really great question, too,
yeah, absolutely.
The first thing that comes to mind for me are glacier caves,
as they're melting at a pretty rapid rate.
We have scientists that are studying glacier caves
on national forest lands, especially on the West Coast,
and some of those caves have, just in our lifetime,
even in the last like 10 years, have completely melted away
so that you can't see that they're there anymore.
But limestone caves, they might take a while
for us to notice, but they will eventually dissolve
and they will be gone, so yeah.
Just not in our lifetime, we might not see it,
we might not see this cave go away.
We have another 400 million years with this one?
(laughing)
Yeah, maybe, maybe 200.
(scientists laughing)
Water slowly carries it all out to see.
Continually thins the walls so the ceiling can collapse,
sometimes so, but never during the tour, never.
Oh yes.
(scientists laughing)
All right, let's get,
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% of the U.S. and 25% around the world,
water comes from cool places like this
where there are caves called karst areas,
which is 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.
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 types 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.
Thank you.
I appreciate that elevator speech
because we wanted you all to remember
all the things that are important about caves.
In case you want to refresh yourselves,
you can always go to www.cavesLIVE.org,
and while you're there, I'd love it
if you'd check out the evaluation,
'cause any time you fill out the evaluations,
you help us refine these programs
and get them a little bit better
for every time we do the next one.
It helps us learn what you learned
and what you need more of.
On that site, you'll also see tons of resources,
you'll have other videos which you can go back and rewatch
over and over and grab a tub of popcorn
and bring your whole family and sit, right.
You can binge and watch the whole CavesLIVE series,
it's awesome.
(Johanna laughs)
So right now, I just wanna thank--
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Before we stop, he's been asking us
all these questions, right.
Amtchat, I have a question for you.
All right.
So I don't know if you all know this,
Stalactites. No, you already
(scientists laughing)
Already answered that one.
So I don't know if you guys knew this,
but Amtchat was very nervous to go into caves
to start with, when we started this whole CavesLIVE journey.
So Amtchat, here we are,
second program, what's your takeaway?
What did you learn about caves?
What's your elevator speech?
Elevator speech, all right,
this is beautiful and I would have hated to have missed out
on all of this.
We live in such a beautiful, amazing world,
and our country is so beautiful and grand and grandiose,
get out and explore it, don't be afraid,
actually try something new.
There are resources all across the web
that can help you find one, in fact,
discovertheforest.org is even one.
You can punch in your zip code and find fun things
to go to and go hang out and explore.
And had I not taken that first step into the cave,
I would've missed out on all this and all the fun
and the learning.
And so I recommend it, if it's a cave, great,
go ahead and explore it.
If it's a waterfall, go explore it.
Take somebody with you
because I've made some great friends along the way
and had a ton of fun.
So elevator speech, all about people and fun.
Thank you, Johanna, I appreciate you asking that question.
Barb, Lima, thank you so much
for being our on-camera experts.
And to all of our scientists online,
thanks for answering those questions.
We didn't get to get to every,
I know we didn't get to get to every single one
because I still have a bunch in my hand,
but we'll keep answering them, so thank you
to all you students out there that are sending them.
Thank you to Rippon Middle School for coming.
(audience applauding and cheering)
And a very, very, very special thanks
to the Luray Caverns staff.
They have done, I mean, this amazing work,
helping us to get all this stuff set up
so we could bring this program to you.
And thank you to all of you at home for viewing.
We hope that you've enjoyed it
and we'll see you again online.
Every time you watch, just smile and we'll feel it,
all right?
(scientists laughing)
Thanks for viewing.
Goodbye everybody. Bye!
(scientists laughing)
(upbeat music)