Cave Systems South of the Green River

Abstract

The cave systems in south-central Kentucky present a rather different perspective to the cave explorer than to the hydrogeologist. The enlargement of the conduit system by concentrated groundwater flow took place early in the history of the cave system, often when many of the enlarging conduits were below regional base level and inaccessible to direct observation. Cave explorers came on the scene rather late, after dissection of the surface landscape had broken up many of the conduits so that only fragments remained as caves to be explored. Internally, many other late-stage processes, such as breakdown and passage plugs of flowstone or clastic sediment, truncated the passages; therefore, reconstruction of the original conduit system must be done by systematic mapping and a good deal of conjecture. As a further frustration, there is nothing in the process of conduit development that ensures human-size entrances into the conduits. Inlets might be sinkhole drains that are too small to traverse, and outlets might pass through artesian or alluviated springs. Entrance formation is a stochastic process brought on by random processes of truncation and decay (Curl, 1958); there is no guiding principle that makes entrances in the places an explorer would find most useful.