New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

Once mostly dismissed as the homes of unpleasant guano deposits, curious but economically worthless mineral displays, and eccentric adventurers, caves and the karst landscapes containing them have come into the scientific research mainstream during the last decade. First-tier journals recently published both refereed papers and summary articles about speleological research. Numerous television documentaries have focused the American public on cave resources, touting cancer-fighting microbes and Martian ecosystem analogues. State surveys increasingly look to speleologists and cavers for help solving water contamination and geoengineering problems.

Work in New Mexico has frequently led the changing respectability towards speleology and karst research. The discovery of Lechuguilla Cave (Carlsbad Caverns NP), the world's most spectacular cave-find in the second half of the 20th Century, ignited the public and scientific interest in caves. Recognition of enormous biomass below the surface of the Earth and the accompanying explosive interest in geomicrobiology has led geologists to look to caves as windows to this fascinating, potentially valuable world. Lechuguilla Cave has served as the most significant, natural geomicrobiology laboratory.

Changing demographics have forced attention towards karst. Karst and pseudokarst lands, such as the Appalachia, Ozarks, and New Mexico, constitute some of the most impoverished and sparsely populated regions of the country. This relationship is a natural consequence of two common characteristics of karst. .... poor soil and few surface streams. Today, industry and suburbia invade karstlands, and humans increasing impacts formerly rural karst regions. Americans can no longer ignore the 20% of our country and New Mexico underlain by karst.