Intro to Karst

Sinkhole in a cup How do sinkholes form? Students use what they know about dissolution of sugar in a cup of water to model dissolution of limestone from groundwater

Sink hole formation

Compare In the cup  As the water drained out of the cup, the sinkhole formed Sinkhole  As the water table falls, the ground sinks into the empty space left behind

Why do we care about karst and groundwater  Georgetown lost its water supply during the winter of when gasoline was detected in the spring that supplies the city. Customers had to be issued bottled water for several weeks  Corvette Museum sink hole:  Filling in the hole will cost $3.2 million and take about eight months to complete  8 cars damaged, valued around 2 million  Attendance went up 67 percent last year

Karst features are all around you

Kentucky: over 50% of the state contains soluble bedrock (ex: limestone)

Aerial view LaRue County Park City, near Mammoth cave

Underground view

How do we find new sinkholes?  KGS LiDAR study:  LiDAR measures distance by illuminating a target with a laser and analyzing the reflected light  Before the study, there were 383 sinkholes for the study area.  After the study, LiDAR detected 1,683 probable sinkholes.  They field-checked 121randomly-selected probable sinkholes and confirmed that 106 were sink holes, and 15 depressions from other factors.

Other resources  KGS interactive data map viewer  r.asp r.asp  Link to KGS LiDAR study  e pdf e pdf nce/terc/content/visualizations/es1405/es140 5page01.cfm