A Cavernous World under the Woods | Hacker News Reader

A Cavernous World under the Woods

hakaimagazine.com

39 pointssohkamyung7 comments

World map of karst regions: https://i2.wp.com/www.circleofblue.org/wp-content/uploads/20...

The study of karst groundwater should not be as esoteric as it is. About one quarter of the world's population is either completely or partially dependent on drinking water from karst (1). The United States is approximately 20% karst landscapes with about 40% of the population affected.

At the same time, there are perhaps a few dozen authoritative scientists of karst hydrology in the United States and Canada.

(1) Hartmann, Andreas & Goldscheider (2014). Karst water resources in a changing world: Review of hydrological modeling approaches. Reviews of Geophysics. 10.1002/2013rg000443

“Keep asking questions like that and you will never get work in this field again.”

Those words should never come from a government official in a democratic country in any context.

Wow, just wow.

It isn't all some perfect word of pure water. Arsenic is often a problem when drilling for potable water, even in rain-drenched places like Vancouver Island.

Karst water is the deeper stuff. Municipal water supplies come from wells drilled deep through karst. A great many people get their water from their own, much shallower, wells.

People get their water from where ever they can get it -- whether shallow or deep. Most people in the world (~75%) do not drink water from karst groundwater, but compared to karst aquifers' spatial extents, two times more people are affected than would be expected.

If you're ever in the area they do cave tours at Horne Lake. They're a pretty far cry from the boardwalk-and-elevator stuff that's common in the US. More like crawl on your stomach through a passage barely bigger than your body that moments ago was full of water.

In the United States, the National Park Service has some fine 'wild cave' tours. I have led several as a ranger at Mammoth Cave National Park, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, and Carlsbad Caverns National Park (Spider Cave & Hall of the White Giant). The Wild Cave tour at Mammoth Cave can be fairly epic if the right guide leads it. These particular parks also each have lantern-type tours that follow rustic, packed-dirt paths on out-of-the way caves and trails. There are actually quite a few other unusual cave tours on federal land throughout the United States, but I have less experience with them (e.g., Round Spring Cave, Missouri; Lava Beds' Crystal Ice Cave, California; Blanchard Springs Caverns, Arkansas; El Capitan Cave, Alaska; Sequoia Nat'l Park's Crystal Cave, California).

Indeed, some of the most spectacular tourist cave experiences are international, such as black water rafting in New Zealand, several eco-adventure resorts in Belize, and 'adventure caving' in Malaysia http://mulupark.com/tours-activities/adventure-caving/

One of my favorite 'normal' tourist caves is Jenolan Caves in Australia. To get to the ticket office and parking lot, you drive through part of the tourist cave. https://goo.gl/maps/aeyabQ3qMEQ2

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