Bowling Green, Ky. - WKU geoscience graduate students Joel Despain (cave specialist at Sequoia National Park) and Pat Kambesis (assistant director of the Hoffman Institute) traveled to Mulu National Park in Sarawak, Malaysia, to participate in ongoing research at that park. 

The objectives of the trip included continued documentation of caves and karst features at Gunung Buda, one of the three major limestone blocks that make up the park.  They also served as field assistants for Jud Partin, who is a Ph.D. candidate at Georgia Tech University.

Partin’s dissertation field work involves investigating and characterizing the geology and hydrology of the Gunung Buda and nearby Gunung Mulu cave systems through the collection and analysis of rainwater, groundwater, and small rock samples and geological mapping. 

Despain and Kambesis also began preliminary field documentation of some of the developed caves in Mulu National Park.

Despain and Kambesis have instigated a research exchange program that will involve bringing several of the Mulu National Park interpretative staff members to Bowling Green in 2007 to participate in the summer University-in-the-Park program offered jointly by WKU and Mammoth Cave National Park, and to work with Mammoth Cave National Park’s division of resource management.   

In addition, Hoffman Environmental Research Institute (part of the Applied Research and Technology Program in WKU’s Ogden College of Science and Engineering) staff and students travel each year to Isla de Mona, Puerto Rico, to document and map the caves and karst resources located on the island. This project is sponsored by the Puerto Rico Department of Natural Resources, which provides the research permits and field assistance. So far more than 30 kilometers of cave passages have been surveyed and resources inventories have been conducted to document historical and archeological resources located within the caves.

“These two exciting projects add significantly to the department’s international research relationships,” noted Geography and Geology Department Head David Keeling.  “Building global relationships such as these really helps to put Western on the international research map, and also helps to enhance our partnership with Mammoth Cave National Park.”

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 Pat Kambesis at (270) 745-5201.

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