Hoffman Institute Students
Represent WKU At Cave Meeting
August 07, 2003
Bowling Green, Ky. - Hoffman Environmental Research Institute graduate students Pat Kambesis and Joel Despain, along with Institute Assistant Director Alan Glennon, represented Western Kentucky University this week at the annual convention of the National Speleological Society.
Glennon gave an invited talk "Assessing Perennial Drainage Density in the Highly-Karstified Turnhole Bend Basin, Kentucky" in a session, hosted by the National Geographic Society, highlighting recent developments in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology.
"This work will bring national attention not only to Western's long-term reputation in karst studies, but to the rapidly developing GIS program that is continuing to pay excellent dividends on the considerable investment that WKU has recently made in GIS infrastructure," according to Hoffman Institute Director Chris Groves.
Pat Kambesis of Chicago presented the results of her research in two talks: "Development, Morphology and Function of a Valley Wall Conduit Cave, Tumbling Rock Cave, Alabama," coauthored with Ira Sasowsky of the University of Akron, and "The Isla de Mona Project: Exploration and Survey of the Most Cavernous Island in the Caribbean."
Kambesis also served as a judge at the Society's annual Cartographic Salon, a national competition to identify the most outstanding cave maps from U.S. cartographers, and where she has won numerous awards herself through the years.
Despain of Three Rivers, Calif., and WKU alumnus Shane Fryer presented results of the exploration in "Coal Trace Cave, Kentucky" where they found one of the largest rooms ever discovered in a Kentucky cave two years ago. They also presented "The Atacama Desert Project - Chilean Halite Karst," describing the results of two expeditions where they and their colleagues are exploring unusual halite (salt) caves in Chile's arid Atacama Desert.
"I'm just thrilled with the level of professionalism and scholarship that students working at this kind of level bring to Western and the Geography and Geology Department," Groves said. "There is also a feedback in the system. When folks at such meetings see that WKU students are involved in high-level geography projects such as these not only in Kentucky and Alabama but in places like the Caribbean and Chile, it certainly doesn't hurt recruiting."
The conference was held Aug. 4-8 in Porterville, Calif. For information, click on www.nss2003.com or www.caves.org.
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