Field Trips and Professional Short-Courses
Beginning in 1968 the Ozark Underground Laboratory, and more recently the Tumbling Creek Cave Foundation, have conducted day-long (and sometimes longer) field trips and professional short-courses at Tumbling Creek Cave and its associated lands. The programs are primarily for college groups, but have also included professional short courses for biologists, hydrologists, geologists, and engineers. Examples include the Missouri Department of Transportation, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Master Naturalist groups, commercial show cave guides, and Missouri Department of Conservation personnel to better familiarize them with actions that can protect cave and karst resources.
Surface field trip from Missouri Western State University.
The late Tom Aley with a group of students on the surface tour.
The typical field trip spends half a day on the surface learning how the surface relates to caves and the karst groundwater system. The second half of the day is spent in the cave. On the surface we visit sinkholes, losing streams, springs, and the Bear Cave entrance to the cave system. Once inside the cave, we walk along 2,100 feet of hard-surface trail that includes stops at vertical shafts that receive recharge water from surface sinkholes, the cave stream to discuss cave fauna and water quality, guano piles to learn about the importance of bats to cave ecology, and several highly decorated areas of the cave to discuss speleothems (cave formations), cave geology, and groundwater hydrology.
A gray bat welcomes a visitor to the upper stream passage.
The reconstructed springhouse.
To request a field trip for your organization, please fill out the field trip request form HERE. For more information, contact:
Dave Woods
President, Tumbling Creek Cave Foundation
417-785-4289
woods@ozarkundergroundlab.com
