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A stalactite is a mineral formation that hangs from the ceiling of caves, hot springs, or man-made structures such as bridges and mines. Any material that is soluble and that can be deposited as a colloid, or is in suspension, or is capable of being melted, may form a stalactite. Stalactites may be composed of lava, minerals, mud, peat, pitch, sand, sinter, and amberat. A stalactite is not necessarily a speleothem, though speleothems are the most common form of stalactite because of the abundance of limestone caves.
Speleology is the scientific study of caves and other karst features, as well as their composition, structure, physical properties, history, ecology, and the processes by which they form (speleogenesis) and change over time (speleomorphology). The term speleology is also sometimes applied to the recreational activity of exploring caves, but this is more properly known as caving, potholing, or spelunking. Speleology and caving are often connected, as the physical skills required for in situ study are the same.
Travertine is a form of terrestrial limestone deposited around mineral springs, especially hot springs. It often has a fibrous or concentric appearance and exists in white, tan, cream-colored, and rusty varieties. It is formed by a process of rapid precipitation of calcium carbonate, often at the mouth of a hot spring or in a limestone cave. In the latter, it can form stalactites, stalagmites, and other speleothems. It is frequently used in Italy and elsewhere as a building material. Similar deposits formed from ambient-temperature water are known as tufa.
The Delaware Basin is a geologic depositional and structural basin in West Texas and southern New Mexico, famous for holding large oil fields and for a fossilized reef exposed at the surface. Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Carlsbad Caverns National Park protect part of the basin. It is part of the larger Permian Basin, itself contained within the Mid-Continent oil province.
The Greenbrier River is a tributary of the New River, 162 miles (261 km) long, in southeastern West Virginia, in the United States. Via the New, Kanawha and Ohio rivers, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River, draining an area of 1,656 square miles (4,290 km2). It is one of the longest rivers in West Virginia.
Germany Valley is a scenic upland valley high in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia originally settled by German farmers in the mid-18th century. It is today a part of the Spruce Knob–Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area of the Monongahela National Forest, although much ownership of the valley remains in private hands.
The West Virginia spring salamander is a species of troglobitic salamander in the family Plethodontidae. It is endemic to West Virginia, the United States.
Azykh Cave, also referred to as Azokh Cave, is a six-cave complex in Azerbaijan, known as a habitation site of prehistoric humans. It is situated near the village of Azykh in the Khojavend District. The cave is an important prehistoric site which has been occupied by different human groups for a long time. The ancient layers of the Middle Paleolithic have yielded Neanderthal fossil remains that may date from around 300,000 years ago.
West Virginia's geologic history stretches back into the Precambrian, and includes several periods of mountain building and erosion. At times, much of what is now West Virginia was covered by swamps, marshlands, and shallow seas, accounting for the wide variety of sedimentary rocks found in the state, as well as its wealth of coal and natural gas deposits. West Virginia has had no active volcanism for hundreds of millions of years, and does not experience large earthquakes, although smaller tremors are associated with the Rome Trough, which passes through the western part of the state.
The Greenbrier Limestone, also known locally as the "Big Lime", is an extensive limestone unit deposited during the Middle Mississippian Epoch, part of the Carboniferous Period. This rock stratum is present below ground in much of West Virginia and neighboring Kentucky, and extends somewhat into adjacent western Maryland and southwestern Virginia. The name derives from the Greenbrier River in West Virginia.
The West Virginia Speleological Survey (WVaSS) is a speleological organization and ongoing cave survey program that has gathered information and published about West Virginia caves and karst since 1967.
Fort Spring is an unincorporated community and town in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, United States. It is situated along the Greenbrier River within the Greenbrier River Watershed. It was once a substantial portion of the Chesapeake and Ohio railway by way of the Gravel Girtie route from Hinton in Summers County to Clifton Forge, Virginia. The name is derived from its main export; Mississippian limestone from Snowflake Quarry sent to Clifton Forge. The main road going through the small town was once the original rail line, but was moved.
The Greenbrier River Watershed Association (GRWA) is one of the oldest watershed associations in the state of West Virginia, founded in 1990. It has supported the creation of other watershed associations throughout the state and maintains a policy of "upstream courtesy" and "downstream courtesy" with its neighbors.
Paleontology in West Virginia refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of West Virginia. West Virginia's fossil record begins in the Cambrian. From that time through the rest of the early Paleozoic, the state was at least partially submerged under a shallow sea. The Paleozoic seas of West Virginia were home to creatures like corals, eurypterids, graptolites, nautiloids, and trilobites at varying times. During the Carboniferous period, the sea was replaced by lushly vegetated coastal swamps. West Virginia is an excellent source of fossil plants due to these deposits. These swamps were home to amphibians. A gap in the local rock record spans from the Permian to the end of the Cenozoic. West Virginia was never the site of glacial activity during the Ice Age, but the state was home to creatures like mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths. One local ground sloth, Megalonyx jeffersonii, was subject to the scholarly investigations of Thomas Jefferson, who misinterpreted the large-clawed remains as belonging to a lion-like predator. In 2008, this species was designated the West Virginia state fossil.
The Cliefden Caves is a heritage-listed geoheritage site at Mandurama, in the Central West region of New South Wales, Australia. The caves comprise Ordovician fossil localities, limestone caves, a spring and tufa dams, and a site where limestone was first discovered in inland Australia.
The Pahasapa Formation is a geological unit of primarily limestone and dolomite that is exposed in the Black Hills of South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming, and underlies parts of Nebraska, in the United States. Also referred to as the Pahasapa Limestone, this unit is analogous to the Madison Limestone, the Lodgepole Limestone, and the Burlington Limestone, other Mississippian-aged limestones and dolomites in the midwestern United States. Some recent literature has grouped stretches of the Pahasapa into the Madison Group. The formation is of local importance, as it contains the Madison aquifer, and two of the ten longest caves in the world.
The geology of Ohio formed beginning more than one billion years ago in the Proterozoic eon of the Precambrian. The igneous and metamorphic crystalline basement rock is poorly understood except through deep boreholes and does not outcrop at the surface. The basement rock is divided between the Grenville Province and Superior Province. When the Grenville Province crust collided with Proto-North America, it launched the Grenville orogeny, a major mountain building event. The Grenville mountains eroded, filling in rift basins and Ohio was flooded and periodically exposed as dry land throughout the Paleozoic. In addition to marine carbonates such as limestone and dolomite, large deposits of shale and sandstone formed as subsequent mountain building events such as the Taconic orogeny and Acadian orogeny led to additional sediment deposition. Ohio transitioned to dryland conditions in the Pennsylvanian, forming large coal swamps and the region has been dryland ever since. Until the Pleistocene glaciations erased these features, the landscape was cut with deep stream valleys, which scoured away hundreds of meters of rock leaving little trace of geologic history in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic.
The geology of North Dakota includes thick sequences oil and coal bearing sedimentary rocks formed in shallow seas in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, as well as terrestrial deposits from the Cenozoic on top of ancient Precambrian crystalline basement rocks. The state has extensive oil and gas, sand and gravel, coal, groundwater and other natural resources.
Nagarevi Cave Natural Monument is a karst cave located near village Godogani, Terjola Municipality in Imereti region of Georgia, 199 meters above sea level. It is located on the left slope of the scenic Cheshura Gorge across the river from monastery.
Friars Hole Cave System is a cave in West Virginia's Greenbrier and Pocahontas counties. First surveyed in the 1960s, it is one of the longest in the United States and the world.
References
- 1 2 Springer, Gregory S. (2018). Caves, Karst, and Science in the Buckeye Creek Cave Watershed. Cave and Karst Systems of the World. Springer International Publishing. pp. 153–162. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-65801-8_9. ISBN 978-3-319-65800-1 . Retrieved 12 December 2024.
- ↑ Lloyd, Caitlin M. "Surficial Geology and Stratigraphy of a Late Pleistocene Lake Deposit in the Buckeye Creek Watershed, Greenbrier County, West Virgina, USA". ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. ProQuest 3112631285 . Retrieved 12 December 2024.
- ↑ Springer, Gregory S.; Mihindukulasooriya, Nivanthi L.; White, Matthew D.; Rowe, Harold D. "Micro-Charcoal Abundances in Stream Sediments From Buckeye Creek Cave, West Virgina, USA" (PDF). Jornal of Cave and Karst Studies. Retrieved 12 December 2024.