Cave / Karst Systems - Carlsbad Caverns National Park (U.S. National ...
https://www.nps.gov/cave/learn/nature/cave.htm
Geologic Formations - Carlsbad Caverns National Park (U.S. National ...
https://www.nps.gov/cave/learn/nature/geologicformations.htm
Dec 18, 2017 - All of them reveal a very unusual ingredient in cave dissolution (creation)—sulfuric acid. Most of the world's limestone caves are created when surface water flows down through cracks in limestone rock and slowly enlarges the passageways. In all surface water, there is a weak acid called carbonic acid.
Most of the world's limestone caves are created when surface water flows down through cracks in limestone rock and slowly enlarges the passageways. In all surface water, there is a weak acid called carbonic acid. This acid slowly dissolves and scours out the rock in more than 90 percent of the world's limestone caves. These types of caves are typically very wet and have streams, rivers and sometimes lakes or large waterfalls in them. However, there are no flowing rivers or streams in any of the hundreds of caves in the Guadalupe Mountains and no evidence that these huge cave chambers were dissolved by carbonic acid.
It is since the 1970s that geologists have come to understand that sulfuric acid played the major role in the dissolution of all Guadalupe Mountain caves.
Evidence shows that when hydrogen sulfide (H2S) from oil deposits in the area and a whole range of newly discovered microbes combine with oxygen in the underground water table, sulfuric acid is the result. This very aggressive dissolution of passageways occurred at the level of the water table along cracks, fractures and faults in the limestone.
Research in Carlsbad Caverns National Park - National Park Service
https://www.nps.gov/cave/learn/nature/upload/research.pdf
How deep is the bottomless pit in Carlsbad Caverns?
Owner description: Pit in Carlsbad Caverns that looks "bottomless" but is actually140-feet deep.
How Deep - Review of Bottomless Pit, Carlsbad Caverns National ...
https://www.tripadvisor.co.nz/ShowUserReviews-g143018-d144829-r234232531-Botto...
The caves of Carlsbad Caverns National Park contain sites with exceptional natural beauty. The park's most famous cave, Carlsbad Cavern, is over 1,000 feet deep and currently contains 30 miles of mapped passages. The Big Room of Carlsbad Cavern is the largest under- ground cha
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Lechugilla microbes
This finding was first reported by Engel, Stern, and Bennet in the journal Geology. They noted that in the outflow springs displayed microbial mats that were up to 17 m long. One thing led to another, and they found that the loss of sulfide from the water could best be accounted for by microbial oxidation. Using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), they found an abundance of filamentous ε-proteobacteria and γ-proteobacteria.
Following up on such work, Macalady and colleagues report conspicuous white biofilms on the surfaces of streams in a cave in Italy, between Venice and Rome. Using 16S rDNA libraries, they showed that proteobacteria were again the predominant organisms, with most of the biomass represented by the sulfur inclusion-containing filamentous Beggiatoa and Thiothrix.
The authors point out that actively forming caves of this sort are relatively rare and, being isolated ecosystems, present unique opportunities for investigation. Here life does not depend on sunlight but on the oxidation of inorganic chemicals, in this case sulfur compounds.
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