Geophysical Mapping of Fountain Cave Anguilla, BWI

Abstract

Ocean Earth Technologies (OET) has conducted a geophysical mapping survey for the Anguilla National Trust at Fountain Cave National Park. The purpose of this work was to map the known Fountain Cavern and any other cavern systems located within state park property that may pose a collapse issue for future proposed buildings. Fountain Cave is an important heritage site as Pre‐ Columbian Indians carved their deities into several of the stalagmites within the cave. Fountain cave currently exhibits two distinct chambers at different elevations that have been connected by a roof collapse. OET utilized Multi‐Electrode Electrical Resistivity (MER) technology to map the parks geology, using sixteen separate transects that employed the Dipole‐Dipole resistivity method. Fountain Cave is but a small part of an extensive cavern system underlying the southern part of the Fountain Cave National Park property. OET identified three new additional chambers associated with Fountain cave but blocked by debris. Several other large caverns were also imaged within the national park property. The Fountain Cave, along with the three new additional chambers, and a large cavern to the east, present a potential tourist attraction opportunity for the park. Further, OET identified 6 marine escarpments/terraces along the property manifested as steep rocky ridges 1.2 to 3 meters in height and oriented roughly parallel to the coast line. The marine terraces provide a controlling factor in the elevation and development of the cave systems across the project site, and these escarpments/terraces have also been correlated to sea level stands documented in Florida. OET combined all of the MER data to generate a pseudo 3‐D image of the cavern systems across the Fountain Cave National Park, which will allow the Anguilla National Trust to expand and implement an educational tourist center on the property.