Hoffman Institute Student Wins National Award

June 10, 2008

Bowling Green, Ky. - Mark Tracy, a geoscience graduate student at Western Kentucky University, has received one of four 2008 national research awards from the Cave Research Foundation (CRF) to support his master’s thesis research into the evolution of karst landscapes like those in south central Kentucky.

The $1,000 research grant given to Tracy, who is from Cobleskill, N.Y., was one of the highest ranked by the reviewers in the competition, even competing with Ph.D. dissertation proposals.

Tracy won the award for the proposal “Carbon sources responsible for conduit evolution in the south central Kentucky karst.” His research will clarify processes by which organic carbon is washed into caves along with sediment, ultimately forming acids that dissolve the limestone bedrock.

“Mark’s work will result in a better understanding of the evolution of large-scale porosity within limestone bedrock,” said geography professor Chris Groves, who with geologist Andrew Wulff is supervising the research. “Such processes, in turn, influence the ability of these systems to provide drinking water sources to hundreds of millions of people, as well as to form important petroleum reservoirs.”

Fieldwork in several caves in Hart, Barren, Edmonson and Warren counties will begin this summer after Tracy returns from a scientific conference in Slovenia in mid-June, part of a team of three WKU graduate students presenting research results there.  He will collect water samples from the caves periodically through the summer, fall and winter to understand seasonal patterns and relationships to temperature and variations in vegetation.

Other graduate and undergraduate students within WKU’s Hoffman Environmental Research Institute will assist Tracy in the numerous cave trips necessary for the research, in turn providing technical field and laboratory experience for them as well.

The work is also taking place under the auspices of the United Nations scientific program “Global Study of Karst Aquifers and Water Resources,” within the International Geoscience Program.

“Mark’s success in this competition is illustrative of the talented students who are attracted to the geoscience program at WKU, in part because of the global research initiatives spearheaded by Dr. Groves and the Hoffman Institute,” said Geography and Geology Department Head David Keeling. “Engaging students in meaningful projects that help our society to improve its overall quality of life is a key goal of the department as our programs continue to extend WKU’s international reach.”
               
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For information, contact Hoffman Institute at (270) 745-3961.