This is a project that I became involved with while at Washington and Lee University. I was originally approached by David Harbor (W&L) to investigate the clay mineralogy of some clastic cave sediments from Bathers Cave. This progressed into a more detailed examination of petrography and petrology, as well as the geochemistry of the sediments. Elizabeth Knapp (W&L) provided her expertise for the geochemical analyses. The interpretation so far is that we have a very complex karst system which, in our opinion, is recording changing paleoclimatic conditions during the Quaternary. Check out the pictures below, David Harbor's web page on this cave, and the text of some of our recent abstracts. Feel free to comment.
Location map:
Cave Stratigraphy
Cave cross-section 1
Cave cross-section 2
Cave sediments
Sediment x-ray diffraction (XRD)
Thin section of the bottom yellow layer
Thin section of the black layer
Thin section of red layer
Thin section of the upper yellow layer
SEM micrograph of authigenic Manganese 1
SEM micrograph of authigenic Manganese 2