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Caves, Creatures, and the Cosmos
By: Reilly Sleater
A cave is comparable to the oh-so-dreaded cavity your dentist may or may not find upon your next check-up. However, unlike a sugar-induced cavity, most caves were formed many thousands of years ago by Mother Nature! Caves can often be defined as natural openings or chambers in the Earth (sometimes also referred to as caverns when there is more than one chamber). There are many different types of caves, all categorized by how they were formed. For example, sea caves can be found along coastlines and are formed by the continuous crashing of waves against rock. Caves can even be made of ice – also known as ice or glacier caves. Glacier caves form when flowing water enters cracks in a glacier, and over time, these cracks become bigger and bigger through erosion. Another kind of cave is made of soluble rock, such as limestone, and is called a solution or karst cave. These caves form when acidified water seeps into underground rock and erodes the rock through a combination of chemical and physical processes. While solution caves are amongst the most common, one specific kind of cave is at the forefront of astrobiological research for extraterrestrial life.
Lava tubes are the research focus for scientists who are currently studying microscopic, resilient creatures present in these caves. The microbial life found in these lava tubes could possibly be present on another planetary bodies in the cosmos. Unlike any other kind of cave, lava tubes form through the aftermath of volcanic eruptions. Lava that reached temperatures of up to ~1200 °C, or ~2200°F, was once ejected out of a volcano, flowed downhill, and eventually cooled and solidified on the tops and sides while liquid remained underneath. Once the eruption had stopped, the lava proceeded to drain from the inside of these hardened lava tubes, creating a hollow cave tube inside. This is all made possible due to the chemical composition of the lava. Lava tubes were formed from basaltic lava, which doesn’t contain a lot of silica. Silica is the chemical agent that determines how thick the magma is. Thus, lava with a low silica concentration has a low viscosity (resistance to flow), meaning it is able to move quicker and easier from a tube.
Lava tube cave in Hawai’i [Photo Credit: Nāhuku- Thurston Lava Tube (NPS Photo/D. Boyle)]
Lava tubes are of particular interest to astrobiologists for more than one reason. The geochemical composition of rocks and minerals found in these caves, along with the living organisms and the things they do within the caves, can assist scientists in their endeavor to discover life on other planetary bodies. For example, Mars and the Moon have lava bed caves present under their rocky surfaces. In fact, the Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecrafts have detected complex networks of what appear to be intersecting tunnels created by the flow of lava. Such caves may be important models for understanding potential biological life on various other planetary bodies. Through studying similar caves here on Earth, scientists are able to look for and target tiny, microbial life forms that may be examples of cave life we might discover on other worlds.
Water droplets on biofilm & glowing microbial colonies in lava tubes upon ultraviolet exposure (Photo Credits: NASA BRAILLE Team)
There is no secret that Mars is a relatively hostile planet with extreme environmental conditions. For example, Mars has a very thin atmosphere compared to Earth. The Red Planet also lacks an intrinsic magnetic field that shields it from the Sun’s radiation. This means that radiation is not deflected, therefore harmful ionizing particles are able to penetrate Mars’ surface. This is definitely not the most ideal condition for biological life, since ionizing radiation causes mutations in an organism’s DNA and can destroy other biological molecules. However, caves have a built-in defense mechanism against this harmful radiation – their habitable surface is underground, thus covered by thick layers of impenetrable rock. Despite Mars’ desert-like terrain and cold temperatures coupled with life-destroying radiation, there still may be hope. Extant microbial life may be preserved and may even be detectable in its underground lava tubes…if only we could go there and find it!
Intersecting valleys on Mars created by lava flow, NASA 2001 Mars Odyssey (Photo Credit: NASA / JPL)
Here on Earth, a group of scientists are currently working on NASA’s BRAILLE (Biologic and Resource Analog Investigations in Low Light Environments) Project, and are venturing into North America’s largest system of lava tubes – more commonly known as the Lava Beds National Monument, located in California and home to over 900 lava bed caves. The BRAILLE team embarked on their research by deploying their cave rover, CaveR, in Valentine Cave. The Valentine Cave is approximately 15 feet high and 70 feet wide, with rocky terrain that’s comparable to what a Martian lava cave is theorized to be like inside. Additionally, the BRAILLE team is collaborating with NASA’s JPL robotics team, CoSTAR (Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Resilient Robots). The CoSTAR and BRAILLE teams have deployed Boston Dynamics SPOT robots, which utilize a software system called NeBula Autonomy Solution. These new-era SPOT robots are of special significance because they have four legs that are able to walk with movements comparable to a dog. The legged robots are designed to traverse extreme terrains without human guidance, which is especially promising for future missions to Mars and the Moon.
Three JPL SPOT robots working in Valentine Cave, Lava Beds National Monument (Photo Credit: NASA / BRAILLE Team)
A JPL SPOT robot in Valentine Cave, Lava Beds National Monument (Photo Credit: NASA / BRAILLE Team)
Mother Nature’s cavities, I mean caves, are of significant importance for the detection of extraterrestrial life. A good portion of people reading the term ‘extraterrestrial life’ may or may not immediately think of a little green alien that travels in a flying saucer. However, rather than searching for little green aliens elsewhere, scientists are microscopically zooming in on caves here on our home planet. With the help of autonomous robots, the research in lava tubes is more efficient than ever. Who knows, maybe the research currently being done will lead to our first discovery of extraterrestrial life!
Reilly Sleater graduated from Florida Atlantic University with a Bachelor’s in Biological Sciences. She is both a Communications Intern for BRAILLE and a Research Associate for BMSIS in the Young Scientist Program.
References:
Astrobiology Institue. (2016). Why Caves – Astrobiology. ESA. http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2016/06/Why_CAVES_Astrobiology.
Blue Marble Space. (n.d.). NASA BRAILLE – Biologic and Resource Analog Investigations in Low Light Environments. https://nasa-braille.org/.
Greicius, T., Jackson, R., & Hartono, N. (n.d.). Nebula-SPOT. JPL. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/robotics-at-jpl/nebula-spot.
Léveillé, R. J., & Datta, S. (2010). Lava tubes and basaltic caves as astrobiological targets on Earth and Mars: A review. Planetary and Space Science, 58(4), 592–598. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pss.2009.06.004
NASA. (n.d.). NeBula Autonomy Solution. JPL. https://costar.jpl.nasa.gov/#nebula_up.
Swanson, D. A. (2015, April 8). Volcano Hazards Glossary – Basalt. USGS. https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vsc/glossary/basalt.html.
Tavares, F. (2019, June 26). Using a ‘Cave Rover,’ NASA Learns to Search for Life Underground. Astrobiology at NASA. https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/using-a-cave-rover-nasa-learns-to-search-for-life-underground/.
U.S. Department of the Interior. (n.d.). Lava Beds National Monument (U.S. National Park Service). National Parks Service. https://www.nps.gov/labe/index.htm.
Ryan & Reilly's First Trip with the Team
R&R Meeting in the Airport
We’ve worked together for just about a year before we finally met in person. The Medford airport is incredibly small—certainly the smallest either of us has ever been to. Meeting in person was exciting, but we found ourselves in a unique situation of quickly jumping right into the normal conversation as if we were old friends catching up after a work trip. We got lunch while we waited for Chris Patterson to land and dived right into a conversation about our flights, our past weekend, and our partners. It wasn’t long before Chris landed, we got our rental car, and the excitement of being on the other side of the country kicked in. The drive should only have been about two hours but we stopped at a couple of scenic overlooks while we drove through the mountains and added the first few pictures to our albums of the trip, the same albums which would eventually have nearly two-thousand pictures cataloging our experience.
Meeting the Team
After our drive, we arrived at Lava Beds, and naturally, we stopped again to take pictures of the park entrance sign and the scenery—a flat and arid landscape garnished with ancient lava rocks and scarred with matching blackened trees, still burnt from fires that ended years ago. Finally, we finished what was left of our drive and parked at the research center, where we were quickly met with a warm embrace by the rest of the team introducing themselves. The anxiety of meeting new people was quickly alleviated by some light chatter over dinner and our first in-person team meeting shortly after.
Mushpot Cave with Barb
Barb Bieler, the logistics coordinator for the trip, brought us to Mushpot cave before we retired to bed. We strapped on helmets and headlamps and followed her on a short walk to the entrance of our first cave. The entrance had cement stairs with railings on both sides and the interior of the cave was conveniently dressed with smaller lighting fixtures. Barb guided us through the cave and told us about some of the features on the walls and the work ahead of us in the week. We were absolutely fascinated by the cave and sufficiently excited for the week as we walked back to the research center under the night sky.
First Look at Valentine
Our first full day of the trip was a busy one. We gathered some informational pamphlets we designed and got printed before heading to Valentine Cave to help set up and get our first look at what was going to be the main home of the team’s Spot Robots for the next week. We got our first look at the robots before Pat Dobson showed us around the cave and we were enthralled by its size, structure, and features. We soon went up to the entrance of the cave to meet the middle school students who were coming to meet the team and see the caves. We handed out our pamphlets and offered to answer any questions, but they were captivated by our NASA jumpsuits and mostly just wanted to know if we were astronauts or if we had gone to the Moon.
Valentine’s Crawlspace
After lunch, Pat brought us to the end of Valentine Cave, well past the aphotonic zone, meaning that no light was coming from the outside. We all turned out our lights and were silent—that sheer darkness was something we had never experienced and it was surprisingly disoriented. This, Pat told us, was why it is so important to bring a spare light source and backup battery when going into the caves. Eventually, at the end of the cave, Pat showed us a small passageway that we had to crawl through. It was a bit nerve-wracking at first but we soon got to the very end of the crawlspace and took some pictures before crawling back out.
The Robots
Finally seeing the robots in action after so long of hearing about and seeing pictures of them was something unforgettable. The robots moved at times with such calculated precision, but sometimes they did “interesting” maneuvers, like trampling over a flood flight that was on the floor. They seemed remarkably smart and advanced but sounded like RoboCop’s limbs as he marches down a street, which was unsettling and certainly felt like a strict contrast to their impressive movement and design.
The Rest of the Caves
While the majority of the team worked in Valentine to run tests with the robots, we had the chance to follow Taeyeon and Sammi as they snuck one of the robots through the tiny crawlspace-sized opening to Mammoth Cave and used the robot’s 30x zoom camera and a handheld UV light to image microbial communities on the cave wall. A train track ran above the cave and we definitely got nervous as we heard it overhead, but as we went deeper into the cave, we were mesmerized by the cathedral ceiling painted with glistening biofilm. Later, we also got the chance to follow Chris as he mapped Yellowstone Cave with a handheld LiDAR scanner. Yellowstone was the most difficult cave to navigate for us and even required some bushwhacking to find its entrance and a rope ladder to get into it. Yellowstone looked ancient, with a floor cluttered with ancient microbial-made structures and small paths to squeeze through.
Saying Goodbye
We had the chance while we were there to interview and get to know the entire team, which made saying goodbye much harder. We hugged and shook hands with everyone and got emotional before driving away with Chris to head back to the airport. We had almost the same layover in Seattle, so we said goodbye to Chris and met there to get lunch and chat about the trip. Finally, we said goodbye to each other about forty times before walking away to our departure gates. One of the last things we did was make an agreement to go back to Lava Beds sometime and relive our adventures.
Lava Caves vs. Solution Caves
By Reilly Sleater and Ryan Kirby
What is a Solution Cave?
Karst is a term used to describe a specific type of landscape that includes sinkholes, sinking streams, caves, springs, and other characteristic features. In fact, ¼ of the world’s population depends upon water supplied from karst areas.
Solution caves are part of the karst geology. They are one of the five major types of caves. Solution caves are a unique kind of cave that is formed through both chemical corrosion and physical erosion. Chemically, these caves are initially formed via the dissolution of porous, soluble rocks. These kinds of rocks are most commonly limestone, but can also be marble, dolostone, and gypsum. The dissolution process of these permeable rocks requires the presence of acidic water, which trickles through the cracks and holes of the rock and eats away at the surrounding rock. Once the water starts dissolving the surrounding rock, over time, these cracks and openings in the rock physically expand and become larger. Thus, how solution caves have come to be.
Another feature of karst landscapes is the presence of an aquifer. While water is passing through the subsurface karst rock, it will also move through two distinct areas or zones within the aquifer. The first zone the water passes through is called the zone of aeration. This is the area above the water table where the majority of pores or spaces within the rock are filled mostly with air. The next zone where the water passes through is called the zone of saturation. This is the area under the water table where the rock is completely saturated with water. Between these two layers is the capillary fringe. The capillary fringe is the boundary where the attractive forces between the molecules of water and rock will cause the rock to “suck” up water, thus forming the capillary fringe. What does this have to do with caves? The cave passages containing air would be within the zone of aeration. The zone of saturation falls somewhere below these passages. Cave-forming processes may occur within any of these zones, wherever water has been flowing.
The National Caves Association created this graphic to help show the features of this type of landscape.
While these solution caves are home to the iconic stalactites and stalagmites, the large drip-like features sinking from the ceiling and rising from the ground that many people think of when they think of caves, the requirements that these landscapes have limestone and be carved by rain makes them likely unique to Earth.
Click here for an image of a solution cave from the National Park Service.
What is a Lava Cave?
Meanwhile, lava tubes, or lava caves, are formed from river-like flows of lava seeping away from a volcano. As these flows creep away from the volcano, the faster core of the flow stays warm longer than the edges, which begin to slowly crust over, much like how the edges of a river freeze before the center. Before long, even the top of the flow will crust over, fully surrounding the magma flow with newly cooled igneous rock. Now insulated by this self-made “ceiling”, the volcanic flow expands downward in a process called volcanic erosion. Once the volcanic eruption has ended, the magma can begin its year-long process of cooling from its 1000 °C temperature, forming small dripping formations on the ceiling as it subsides and vacates the lava tubes.
Click here for an image of a Lava Tube from the National Park Service
These newly carved caves offer an enticing home to life of all kinds, from mammals to microbes, some of which don’t rely on outside resources at all. For example, some biofilm, or large coatings of microbial communities that live on the walls of these caves, are chemolithoautotrophic, meaning that they feed on the minerals and carbon dioxide within the caves for energy, much like how photosynthetic plants feed on sunlight for their energy.
The igneous rock formed by this process is known as basalt and has chemical compositions dominated by iron, magnesium, and calcium. This basalt is porous, light in weight, and low density, with an abundance of empty cavities, called vesicles, which give the rocks a sponge-like appearance. Since these caves, and therefore these basaltic rocks, are the byproduct of active volcanic activity, they are common here on Earth, and even throughout our solar system. For example, Mars is home to the largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons, which is surrounded by ancient lava flows that cooled millions of years ago, now leaving only empty caves with these basaltic minerals and the gases from the surface-level of Mars’ atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide. Having the same minerals and gases that allow these chemolithoautotrophic microbial colonies to thrive here on Earth makes them an intriguing prospect for life on the red planet.
SciComm in the Field
By Ryan Kirby
The Many Faces of Science Communication
Science Communication (SciComm) can come in many forms, be it video, writing, graphics, personal dialog, or any other mode of communication. Communicating the science behind a project or field of science can range from making a small write-up about it to developing a large-scale video production on the likes of The Cosmos and everything in between. Understanding the audience, context, and purpose of the SciComm content you want to develop is crucial to determining what mode of communication you may want to use. For example, it may be easier for you to communicate how planets move around the sun to young children by using toy props to demonstrate or an animated video if you have a significant amount of time with them, while you may want to have attractive graphics or interesting pictures on fliers that show their orbits if you want them to have something to take with them. Similarly, the cute and colorful imagery that appeals to these children may not be the best approach for different groups.
From children’s books on quantum mechanics to simulation-like video games about settling on Mars, there are copious ways to communicate science topics to audiences of all ages. Of course, not all college students would be interested in reading said children’s book nor would many children get much out of trying such a video game because, again, understanding the audience that your SciComm project is geared toward is important to its success. Still, with the abundance of SciComm options at our disposal, it can be difficult to decide how to best communicate with your desired audience, even after you’ve identified them. We want to take you through our preparation and SciComm experiences during the May ‘22 field expedition to help give you an insight as to how we tackled this challenge.
Our Audience
We knew that we were going to be joined in the caves by two groups of middle school students during our first day on-site. Knowing this was helpful not just for our SciComm planning, but also for planning our experiment schedule. Since we wanted the students to be able to explore the caves and didn’t want our experiments interrupted, we opted to set up but not begin the experiments. This allowed the students to see the equipment (including the Spot robots!) and let us start up the experiments without too much wait once they left. It turned out that we would have over 30 visitors in each group, including teachers who monitored the students as they explored.
In addition to the students, we expected to be joined by smaller groups of visitors throughout the week since the park was still open to the public and our outfits drew a lot of attention, but we also planned on a Meet-and-Greet with one of the Spot robots near the end of the week, where the park staff and their families were invited to visit us at the research center. Lastly, we wanted to communicate with our followers on social media throughout the week as well; this group was naturally the hardest to predict what would best resonate with them since it consists of such a wide range of ages and backgrounds.
Deciding How to Reach Our Audience
Knowing our target audiences helped us prepare for our SciComm adventures significantly. We knew that our audience that would be physically joining us at the caves would largely consist of young students and families, meaning that we could gear our hands-on communication methods to be focused on these groups. This meant that we wanted to keep things short and simple but exciting and eye-catching, not heavily involved in the technical aspects of the robots or the mission. Having some background in graphic design, we hoped that this would prove to be one way to approach our audience; we wanted to use simplified graphics and short one-liners that would attract the attention of younger audiences. With this, we set out to do just that. We prepared many iterations of a vector art hand-drawn-style Spot robot until reaching two final designs, one with a boxy design and the other cartoony design. All of our final designs can be found on their respective page on our website, and are free to download!
Having two designs allowed us to be more flexible with how we delivered these designs to our audiences, now we just needed to decide how exactly we wanted to “deliver” this project to them. Luckily, once we decided on using graphic design in person, we already narrowed down our options to either having things hanging up and displayed around the caves and research center or making small items for them to take away. In an effort to not clutter our work area and the national park and to give our visitors something tangible they could remember the trip by, we landed on designing posters, small cards, and stickers to distribute on our trip.
We made several different designs for small cards so that everyone could take one that they liked with them. These ranged from a Spot robot on Mars to one peering out of a cave and looking toward the distant Moon. With these designs working well for our cards and posters, we just needed to make a more formal logo for our shirts and stickers. For this, we stuck with the simple design and used a hand-drawn-style Spot robot in a circular cave with “biological and resource analog investigations in low light environments” surrounding the design in a circle, reminiscent of an older design we used with the retired CaveR rover now replaced with a Spot robot. Short and simple, yet exciting and eye-catching.
SciComm in Action
Now that we had prepared well with our audience in mind, all that was left was to put all of this preparation work into action. When we arrived at the site, we prepared the first day to show the young students our designs, give them cards with their favorite graphics, and talk to them about the caves, robots, and astrobiology in general. Most of their questions were along the lines of “have you been to the Moon?” and “are you an astronaut?”, which were, if nothing else, fun and easy-to-answer questions.
We had other visitors throughout the week, including former team members, nation park workers, campers, cavers, and even the park superintendent, all of which adored both seeing the robots and having small tokens to take home, but there is one last part of our audience we couldn’t physically share these designs with, our online audience. Instead, we tried to communicate with them via pictures of our team members hard at work and videos of them explaining what they were working on. Some of these videos were exceptionally well received, reaching more views than any of our prior posts on the platform.
Overall, we found a lot of success in designing fun and eye-catching graphics for our younger in-person audiences to take home and going more in-depth videos about our project on our online platforms, where we were naturally found by more science-minded people.
Sending Spots to Space!
By Ryan Kirby and Reilly Sleater
Don’t we already have robots on other planets?
Of course, as any space enthusiast knows, humans have been sending robots to other planets for a long time now—from the Apollo-era Lunar Roving Vehicles to modern-age Martian rovers. So, naturally, you may be wondering what all of our fuss is about regarding the Boston Dynamics Spot Robots that we are using to explore caves here on Earth as an analog to martian cave exploration. Shouldn’t we use a rover if we wanted a true martian analog? Well, we tried that in the past and ultimately have adopted legged robots as more ideal navigators for difficult cave-like terrain.
Legged robots have numerous advantages over traditional wheeled robots, especially when it comes to exploring difficult terrain. For example, legged robots, like the Spot robots have better mobility, enhanced terrain adaptability, and can more easily navigate small areas. We want to explore all of the reasons that we advocate for legged robots in caves in another blog post, but for now, we want to talk about the difficulties of sending a Spot robot to the Moon or Mars.
So, why haven’t we sent any legged robots there yet?
Luckily Chris Patterson took some time to explain this on our Instagram account, but we wanted to share a bit more here. There are several reasons that Spot robots aren’t ready for space yet, including thermal regulation, solar radiation, and movement calibration.
First off, how do we cool the robotic components down (i.e., thermal regulation)? Most people are under the impression that space is very cold, and for the most part, it is; but in direct sunlight, it can also be incredibly hot. It is imperative that the robotic components are kept cool enough to function—avoiding all and any irreversible damage from heat damage.
Next, space is a vacuum and unlike Earth, there is no atmosphere or magnetic field to protect either the Moon or Mars from extremely damaging radiation, and robotic components would short out if exposed to radiation. Lastly, the way our Spot robots are currently calibrated to walk would not work or be effective on lunar or martian surfaces. Currently, Spot is way too powerful for the lunar surface. For example, if it were to be placed onto the Moon and take a step, it would most likely jump into the air and never come back down. Additionally, the Spot robot would most likely not have enough grip on surfaces other than Earth. This would mainly be due to the fine nature of the dust on the surface of the moon and Mars.
Well, I’m convinced—let’s send one!
Unfortunately, fitting a Spot robot to survive these harsh conditions would cost millions of dollars today, and we would need some technological advances to make it more feasible. While our Spot robots are not quite ready for extra-terrestrial navigation and exploration, we hope that our work using these robots here on Earth will encourage more research and investments into extra-terrestrial legged robots and better prepare us for when we are ready to send them to our neighboring planets.
Caves and Culture: El Malpais National Monument
By: Daniel Runyan
In the 1500s, Spanish explorers traveled across New Mexico searching for fabled cities of gold. They never did discover a city of gold, but one thing they did find was a treacherous, sprawling, ancient volcanic landscape. They marveled at the land laid before them, and the sheer variety of basaltic formations and remnants of past lava flows made the place an absolute pain to navigate. Such a pain in fact that Spanish mapmakers named the barren volcanic field El Malpais, meaning badlands or “the bad country”. I too would have preferred a city of gold, but El Malpais really isn’t that bad.
El Malpais defines a 100,000 acre landscape of breathtaking volcanic features such as basalt flows, cinder cones, and caves. The other volcanic structures are all well and good, but if you’re like me, the word ‘caves’ is what catches your attention. Something I’m sure we all know: caves are objectively, scientifically proven to be really cool. Well, for the average cave appreciator El Malpais is a goldmine, boasting all sorts of beautiful caverns and snaking lava tube systems.
But how exactly did these caves form? Well, as large lava flows gushed out of the earth, the outer layer of the flows began to cool and solidify. This created walls around the lava flow, forming a kind of pipeline. The inside of the flows remained liquid, and continued flowing. Much like liquid draining from a straw, this leaves behind a hollow tunnel referred to as a lava tube. The El Malpais region was absolutely brimming with ancient volcanic activity, and so it proved to be an excellent environment for the formation of these lava tube caves.
Though many caves have been formed in El Malpais, they tend to just start falling apart. Lava tubes in particular are susceptible to weathering and roof collapse. As a result of staggered volcanic flows throughout the history of the El Malpais region, these lava tubes can be found in a variety of conditions. Many of the lava tubes have been reduced to simple archways or short passageways, while others remain as grandiose geologic spectacles.
Because of their tendency to undergo ceiling collapse, skylights are a common feature in the lava tubes of El Melpais. One of the more well-known caves in El Malpais is Four Windows Cave, the name coming from the four skylights in the cave’s ceiling. It was formed from a lava flow that took place around 10,000 years ago. That would be impressively young as far as your average cave goes, but as far as lava tube caves go, that’s impressively old. It hasn’t fallen apart all that badly and can be explored for quite a long ways. Caves are well insulated environments, and Four Windows Cave is kept cool for most of the year. Arrays of icicles can usually be found lining its walls, with rounded formations of ice completely covering the floor as one moves deeper into the cave.
The diversity of environments found in the lava tube caves doesn’t stop there. The sunlight let in through skylights lead to the growth of moss gardens, the biggest of which belongs to the largest lava tube in El Malpais – Big Skylight Cave. Big Skylight Cave has a big skylight, so you see, the name is very clever. The moss gardens are particularly sensitive, calling attention to the idea of “take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints” – a practice that should always be taken seriously in caves.
Ok, now we know a little about lava tubes and a few of the varied cave systems of El Malpais. However, magnificent natural monuments like El Malpais are always likely to have important cultural history which can easily be overlooked. The land was noted by the Spanish as unlivable, but apparently Native Americans didn’t get the memo and they discovered ways to settle on the land and take advantage of its natural resources. In fact, archeologists have determined that people have been interacting with the area for over 10,000 years. The caves were used as refuge, and they collected water from the ice that formed in the caves as it melted. Petroglyphs have been found scattered here and there, and the ancient lava flows proved to be culturally significant to the Zuni and Acoma peoples.
As a result of this Native American history, El Malpais is not only an impressive geological site bristling with volcanic cave systems, but an important cultural site as well. El Malpais highlights that caves are not only geologically impressive, but the unique landscapes they create have been inspiring awe and wonder in humans ever since we were around. There’s just something so exciting about giant holes in the ground!
To learn more about El Malpais, refer to the National Park Service: https://www.nps.gov/elma/index.htm
Daniel Runyan is an undergraduate at New Mexico Tech. He is a Research Associate for the BMSIS Young Scientist Program and a Communications Intern for the National Caves and Karst Research Institute.
Image Below: Big Skylight Cave, © Kenneth Ingham 2013
Field Campaign III (Summer ’19): We’re Back!
We are a month out from our next field campaign at Lava Beds National Monument, and gearing up for another productive and exciting summer. Joining us this year are three new interns: Grace Seward, Jody Huang, and Maris Picher Kanouff.
Come along with us as we prepare for our big trip! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and we’ll promise to post weekly updates. Also please leave feedback, we love hearing from you!
Field Campaign II (Summer ’18): Heading Home
We are heading home tomorrow after a long two weeks of field work. We all put in many hours and collected valuable data, which we will spend the next year reviewing. We will return to NASA Ames with many fond memories (and a few sunburns).
Thank you to Barbara and Wendy, two incredible Lava Beds National Monument rangers who have been so instrumental in making our second field campaign go smoothly. Thank you to Kathryn Lacey for the delicious food and moral support. And thank you to this year’s interns: Cindy Nguyen, Rison Naness, and Julia Chen.
Many more exciting things to come!
Field Campaign II (Summer ’18): First Week at Lava Beds!
Today marked the first day of the second field campaign at Lava Beds National Monument. The trip from NASA Ames Research Center, the BRAILLE team home base, to LABE was about 6 and a half hours, but the beauty of the national park made the trip well worth it. Along with 15 members of the BRAILLE team came Kathryn Lacey, who will be working hard to prepare meals for the team during the campaign. We appreciate all she has done for BRAILLE, and look forward to her delicious cooking!
As we began testing, we descended into our first lava tube caves using a cable ladder system (shown on the left). Once inside, we prepared the CaveR rover, which we had painstakingly transported from Ames, to collect data. Our foot scientists waited patiently outside to review the rover’s progress. Other BRAILLE team members maneuvered the rover through the cave using a game controller.
Tonight we will head back to our little tent city, which we set up this afternoon in the national park. Looking forward to waking up to a beautiful sunrise tomorrow morning.
If you are interested in following our progress, please check out our instagram where we will be posting regular updates!