CAVES by: Miranda Reinke

Caves


What is a cave?

Caves or a cavern is a natural underground void large enough for a human to enter. Now, where can you find one of these weird things called caves? Well, caves are found all around the world, in warm tropical rain forests, to cold plain environments! In the United States, the two states that have the most caves, are Tennessee, and closely following is Missouri. I went to two caves in Missouri .They were called Marvel Cave and Meramec Cavern. (A cavern is just a bigger cave)You probably have a cave close to were you live and you just don’t know it because caves are underground! Caves are not just underground, they can be found under water too! These things called caves are older than the dinosaurs! At the present, you are probably thinking how did these strange things get here? However, there is not just one way that a cave can be made, there’s a lot of natural processes!

How they are formed?

One way, plainly put, caves are craved out by water or acidic rainwater. Acidic rainwater is the biggest component of making a cave! Acidic rainwater, is simply carbonic acid that is contained in rainwater. Some other ways a cave can be formed is by percolating sulphuric acid, flowing water glaciers, wave action, and particle abrasion. Furthermore, what are the familiar stalactites, and stalagmites that we all hear of?


This is a daigram of how a cave is made.

What are stalactites and stalagmites?

As plants and animals decay on the top level of soil, it releases carbon dioxide gas. The water seeping through reacts with this gas to form weak carbonic acid or ‘acid rain’.
As carbonic acid dissolves the solid limestone; a chemical reaction causes it to dissolve even more limestone, about 25 times more than would dissolve in water alone. This limestone-water drips through the cavern, the carbon dioxide evaporates and the calcium carbonate that is left forms the stalactites and stalagmites we see in caves. Stalactites and stalagmites and Columns are all made the same way but there are some differences. Stalactites come from the top of the cave and Stalagmites come from the bottom of the cave. But columns are both together or in other words the two are joined. Just like caves, these are very old too! For instance, it take 35 years for these things to grow less then an inch!


This is a daigram of how stalactites, stalagmites and columns are made.














DO NOT TOUCH THE STALACTITES, STALAGMITES OR THE COLUMNS! They will die were you touched them for ever, and for ever is a long time! It is because of the oil in your fingers, the oil repels the water from that spot. So if you touch the tip, no more growth can occur. If you touch the side, the spot you touched, will not grow and it turns back.
Meramec Cavern has so many stalactites, stalagmites and columns! They are so big and old! They have a arrangement of stalactites, stalagmites, and columns all in one called a ‘Stage Curtain’ ! In the one that I saw, a full 90% of this combination of these three, is still growing! Now you know how stalactites, and stalagmites are formed. Do you wonder what would you see in a cave?
　
What would you see in a cave?

There are so many, many wonderful things you would see in a cave!
Some are…

bats

cave crickets

blind cave crayfish












Blondie throne
Soda straw stalactites
Water falls

















Rivers















Crystals,
Silver ,
Gold











Sand
Clay
Bat poop! or guano
stalactites and stalagmites















And much, much more
I saw many of these thing in the two caves I was in!

How are caves used?

Caves are used for mining! What do they mine?
Gold
Silver
Crystal
Clay
Bat poop
Geodes

Caves are mainly a tourist attraction, only when the cave has been made sure that the cave is safe for people to explore! People have also lived in them as a home in the past, such as Indians and Pioneers. I wouldn’t want to live in that house cold, wet, rocky… yuck! But still today over thousands of people still live in caves, mostly in China. Caves have also been made in to hotels. I don’t know how they did it, but it’s a cool concept to put a hotel in a cave. All of these things help the economy so much in the area that the cave are in.

Bat poop is a good fertilizer because it has a lot of nitrogen and plants use a lot of it! So both caves that I went to had a lot of bat poop, as much as 25ft of it in one pile !! ( Marvel Cave) THAT’S A LOT OF POOP! Not only is bat poop used for fertilizer it is also one of the three ingredients in gunpowder, which is called salt-peter. The two others are charcoal, and sulfur. So the people who had owned these two caves became very rich!




















How many different types of caves are there and what are they?

There are many types of caves including fissure, talus, solutional, granite, slate, erosional, man-made, rare emerged sea caves, sea caves, and sandstone caves. Hypogenic caves, Epigenic caves, Boulder caves are several other kinds of caves. some more are…

Mines

What is a mine or a tunnel? We'll it surely isn't a cave but rather a man-made hole in the earth. Some cavers are intrigued with mines as a different aspect of underground exploring. Some mines are bigger then most Pennsylvania caves and their huge passage size can astound you. Then there are some mines that are small or narrow. In some rare cases, you can even find caves intersected by mine passages (remember, most caves do not have entrances yet). Some of the bigger sized mines were being excavated in the last 50 years or so. The smaller mines appear to be much older (1800's) since everything was dug by hand. Mines have little to offer the explorer since speleothems formations do not exist and about every passage looks like the next. While some mines look quite sturdy, many do not (and probably aren't'). Although, some caves may have breakdown (many rocks on the cave floor) and cracked ceilings, they are not about to collapse. This can not be said for mines. Caves have gone through millions of years of dissolving evolution where mines have gone through years of explosive charges that have disturbed the rock strata and perhaps weakened rock formations needed for ceiling stability. While cavers will sometimes explore mines, they prefer a cave any day. The old saying, "if it looks bad, then it probably is", holds very true for mines.


Commercial show caves

Commercial show caves are those that are in a business operation status where you would pay to see the cave. The cave is equipped with its own lighting system, paths, steps, bridges, railing and tour guides. Although some cavers do not consider show caves as "real caves" because of the exploitation of the commercial nature. The truth is, commercial caves are of great value to caving. Many are as pristine as the day they were discovered which allows you to see a cave that hasn't been vandalized or mistreated. Of course the commercial cave owners have the advantage of controlling this situation where private owners of wild caves elect not to do so. Commercial caves interests are the cave beauties, that if destroyed means financial ruin. The wild cave owner concerns are of liability and if sued could mean also financial ruin. Since most cavers do not own caves, they get to explore usually vandalized or caves that have been neglected by usage (that is why many cavers keep secret virgin finds unless they can get the owner to accept some form of cave protection). Some cavers have felt that commercial caves have made themselves a bad reputation as using the cave for financial gain purposes. This is changing since many commercial caves now offer educational tours (and wild tours) that teach the public about conservation cave animal life, geology, etc. They are doing this while making the learning process fun. Cavers on the other hand, would like to keep their hobby restricted to only those that takes caves and caving serious. While this is a form of cave protection, it does leave out the many curious flash light "spelunkers" that usually create many problems with cave owners and caving. So, commercial caves that do more then point out a formation that looks like the Capitol Dome, actually are very beneficial by trying to educate the public about caves. As caving becomes more popular, commercial caves might play an important role in getting more people concerned with the proper attitudes towards caves. The two cave that I went to were commercial caves.

Sand caves

Sand caves are formed by the abrasive action of wind and or water-borne particles. Although sometimes solution type features are noted, sand caves do not dissolve away as in the case of limestone caves. However, it is also possible to find caves with a high content mixture of sand, where the limestone has dissolved away that was once there or in small matrix quantity. Most sandstone caves in Pennsylvania are quite small ranging not more then a few hundred feet in length (but are usually still larger than tectonic caves). True sandstone caves do not have the beautiful hanging speleothems formations as limestone caves.

Tectonic caves

The movement of bedrock forming chambers and passages forms tectonic caves. One example of a tectonic cave would be a mass of boulders piled up creating voids inside big enough to be explored (this can also be considered a talus cave). They can occur in any type of rock and are usually small in size. Although some weathering may be noticed in tectrmations, it is not hard to tell the difference between tectonic caves and the regular solutional limestone caves.

Water cave

Those types of caves have you getting wet! Water caves are such that you are in the water more than out. Sometimes this might be a little stream of low depth, while at other times you might have water up to your chest (if you have to explore the whole cave by raft or boat then you are certainly in a water cave). Water caves can have underground streams and lakes. Some water caves can be only explored by cave divers. Caution must be seriously taken in water caves since flooding can sometimes occur leaving you either trapped from getting out or dead by drowning.