by wyandottecaver » Oct 4, 2010 7:42 am
the first consideration is that WNS has been shutting down non WNS research in some areas and you probably want to have some long talks with the local land management agencies to see what their contingency plans are. This also means that costs for your project may be higher to accomadate chemicals and supplies for repeated decon or replacement of gear.
As to subject matter, The only gypsum karst I have been in was "parks ranch cave" (I think) near carlesbad for a NCRC weeklong. Had about 5 thousand entrances :) It seemed like it was essentially a cow pee sewer in lots of places. If that is indeed true, then contrasting the flora/fauna of a site with err high organic inputs vs some other site without them might be interesting.
I also got the impression that that cave saw lots of traffic. trying to asses recreational impacts for gypsum substrates might be useful, if not very interesting from a research side.
I'm not scared of the dark, it's the things IN the dark that make me nervous. :)