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Hoffman Institute Initiates New January 22, 2004 Along with karst hydrologists from the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences and the Xiangxi State (Hunan) Hydrogeology Bureau, they investigated several huge caves and underground rivers on western Hunan's Guizhou Plateau and negotiated details for a WKU led cave expedition to the area this March. The project, which entails building a large in-cave dam along an underground river, will attempt to raise water levels in the cave system almost 600 feet to make water more accessible to poor and dry communities that lie on the high plateau above the cave system. More than 100 Chinese geologists, geophysicists and engineers are at work on the effort. The March expedition, which will include several WKU graduate students, will assist the Chinese scientists with expertise in cave exploration and survey methods, cartography and Geographic Information Systems to support the project. Dr. Jiang Zhongcheng of the Institute of Karst Geology in Guilin, who has made several visits to WKU and who directs the cave research aspects of the Hunan project, explained to the team that economic development is difficult if people in the area are expending a great deal of effort just to get sufficient water and if irrigation is limited. "There are over 40,000 people in eight remote towns and rural areas between them who will immediately and directly benefit from the project if it is successful," said Dr. Chris Groves, who directs WKU's Hoffman Environmental Research Institute. He and WKU students have been working on karst research in China for eight years. The local area, which is dominated by people of the Miao minority nationality, is generally poor -- in one town the group visited the average annual salary is less than $60 -- and for several months during the winter dry season residents must carry drinking water as far as two miles from the nearest cave stream or small spring. "Even under those difficult circumstances, the people we met were friendly and very kind," Dr. Groves said. "The improvement in the quality of life there if the project works will be enormous." Dr. David Keeling, Geography and Geology department head, who has traveled to China twice in work with the consortium, noted that research conducted by the Hoffman Institute "is critical not only to addressing sustainable social and economic development issues in China but also to helping us understand our own community's challenges." The department's international programs, Dr. Keeling said, "provide faculty and students the opportunity to apply geoscience techniques to myriad problems in communities around the world. First-hand experiences in China, Argentina, Mexico, England, Bosnia and other field sites demonstrate how critical geoscience solutions to contemporary problems have become." For more information about the China project or other international programs in geoscience, contact the Hoffman Environmental Research Institute at (270) 745-4169 or Dr. David Keeling at david.keeling@wku.edu. More WKU news is available on the World Wide Web at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via E-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
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