Bowling Green, Ky. - Western Kentucky University geoscience faculty and students have begun a new cave karst research project in China's Hunan Province.

At the request of the local government in the city of Chengzhou in southeastern Hunan, a group from WKU's Hoffman Environmental Research Institute is studying the karst area that contains Wanhuayan, or Thousand Beauties Cave, during several trips to China this winter.

Wanhuayan is a well-known tourist cave where visitors travel in one entrance and out another, according to Dr. Chris Groves, who directs the Hoffman Institute within WKU's Applied Research and Technology Program. Dr. Groves recently visited Wanhuayan and other nearby caves and met with Chinese scientists and officials to plan the project. The exit of the tour leaves the cave by climbing up through a spectacular 260-foot deep shaft.

The Chinese contacted the WKU group with a request to organize an expedition to explore and map side passages in the cave that have not been completely explored, as well as other nearby caves that might connect to Wanhuayan.

The WKU group also will conduct fluorescent dye tracing studies to gain more information on the routes of the area's underground river systems. Several caves in the area have never been entered because the local people lack the ability to negotiate many entrances that consist of deep vertical shafts, Dr. Groves said.

The officials hope that discoveries of new areas in the cave will allow them to further develop new tours in the cave, eventually to attract additional tourists to the area, he said.

"This is a great situation because a project like this allows our group to explore and study great new Chinese caves, while simultaneously providing a service to the local government there," Dr. Groves said.

Like other parts of southwestern China's rural karst regions, the area is relatively poor, and the ability to attract additional tourists to the area offers a potential resource for sustainable economic development. About eight million people in the southwest China karst region live below China's poverty level, which is defined as an income of 625 Chinese yuan, equivalent to about $75 per year.

WKU's Pat Kambesis will lead a nine-person expedition to the Wanhuayan area in early March. The expedition team will include WKU geoscience graduate students Andrea Croskrey and Ben Tobin as well as several of Dr. Groves' Chinese colleagues from the Institute of Karst Geology of China in Guilin. WKU scientists have collaborated on numerous projects with the Institute over the past nine years.

More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you'd like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.

For information, contact Chris Groves at (270) 745-5974.