Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Department

Geography and Geology

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Cave passages in Great Onyx Cave, developed within the Girkin and Ste. Genevieve Limestones of Mammoth Cave National Park, contain a variety of secondary features on cave walls, including speleothems such as stalactites, stalagmites, and flowstone, evaporite minerals, and dissolution features such as pits and domes. What secondary features are present on the walls of a cave passage depends on the flow and geochemistry of capillary water that has interacted with the cave passage. In the Mammoth Cave aquifer, five distinct geochemical zones have been broadly defined and each typically contains a particular set of secondary features. Geochemical zonation in Great Onyx Cave has not been thoroughly studied. This project identifies the geochemistry of capillary water in this part of the aquifer by plotting the distribution of secondary features on a high-resolution map of the cave provided by the Cave Research Foundation and Mammoth Cave National Park. The cave map was imported into a GIS with surface topography and geologic units, for the purpose of plotting the relationships between these zones and the rock layers above the cave and how those may be influencing the flow of water downward from the surface.

Advisor(s) or Committee Chair

Chris Groves, Ph.D.

Disciplines

Geochemistry | Geology | Speleology

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