# of caves in the US, on federal, and NPS managed lands

[pighunter]

hello all,

I'm looking for current published information or strongly backed information on numbers of caves in the US, on federal lands, and on NPS lands. mainly the US but...

Any suggestions for places to look?

thanks

[wyandottecaver]

not easy..or maybe even possible. any realistic # will take work. # caves US would require the various State surveys to give info (see related # caves/state thread). Public agencies vary widely in how much they know about their caves, how they track it, and how they release that info. As an example, in Indiana a private group associated with the State Cave Survey has worked for several years doing inventories of the Hoosier NF and other properties. In many cases those agencies didn't know themselves the status of their karst resources and what they did know they didn't necessarily release to the public.

[Teresa]

I'm looking for current published information or strongly backed information on numbers of caves in the US, on federal lands, and on NPS lands. mainly the US but...Any suggestions for places to look?

Depending on why you are looking for this information:

a) Contact every state's geological survey and ask for the number of known caves then add them together. Not exact, but you'll get a good ballpark figure. Ditto any state cave surveys you can get contact info for as a backup.
b) Contact a local representative of the USFS, NPS, BLM, F&WS, ACE and DoD and explain why you are wanting a number,and that you expressly don't want any location information. If they don't know, ask for referral to their national office or to their national cave specialist. It is NOT illegal for them to give out the number of caves on their property-- just the locations are protected. For example, both the NPS unit and Forest Service units in Missouri give the number of caves on their property on their websites.

c) Contact someone at NCKRI (National Caves and Karst Research Institute at New Mexico Tech in Carlsbad, NM.

d)http://www.caves.org/pub/journal/PDF/V61/v61n3-Culver.pdf (1999) gives 45,000 known caves in the contiguous 48 states. Both Hawaii and Alaska also have caves. Given that we are 10 years down the road, and extrapolating how many caves have been found in Tennessee and Missouri in that time to other states, counting lava tubes as caves, and everything in the Tongass in Alaska, saying about 53,000-55,000 known caves exist today in the US is probably a pretty good SWAG. You'd have to figure out if you are including US territories, protectorates and possessions, because Puerto Rico, Guam and others also have caves, and whether or not divable springs count as caves or as springs. You are not going to get a solid figure because the number you are seeking is a moving target; caves are found and destroyed daily.

Pay no attention to the USGS stuff on caves. It is egregiously outdated; for example, calling Mammoth-Flint Ridge only 169 miles of cave.

Hee-hee! This will be some research! Have fun following the leads above. Let us know what you find out!

[Tlaloc]

Under the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988 all federal agencies were required to do an inventory of "significant" caves. All of this information should be at the National Cave and Karst Research Institute. Otherwise you could ask the departments of the Interior and Agriculture or individually the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service.

[Bill Putnam]

The NSS Cave Files Committee compiles and maintains information on more than 54,000 US caves for use by researchers. That would be one place to start. See this thread for more info. Of course, the files do not necessarily contain information on every cave in a given state - just the ones that have been mentioned in a publication over the years - but they also include reports from state cave surveys and knowledgeable people regarding the distribution of caves in various states and regions.

Contacting state cave surveys (for the relatively few states where they exist) will be helpful, but not definitive. There aren't that many of them, and some are not very well organized or effective. Others are very protective (some would say secretive) of their information and may not be interested in helping unless you can refine your questsions to specific ones that they can answer (i.e what percentage of the reported cave entrances in your state are on private, state, or federal land?). Getting information from the federal governement can be even more challenging.

Many years ago I was interested in the same questions and spent some time gathering info from the NSS cave files and the state cave surveys that existed at the time. Not surprisingly, I found that the percentage of caves on government versus private land generally mirrored the overall ownership distribution of land in a given state and for the country as a whole. However, I did not consider karst land versus non-karst land in the rough analysis - I just used the overall ownership figures for all land in a state - but I suspect that doing so would not substantially affect the result. It might increase the proportion of publicly owned caves in western states somewhat. Someone else will have to find out for sure.

Generally speaking, in eastern states, something like 95% of all land is privately owned and, naturally, so are 95% of the caves. Out west the ratio of public land to private land is much greater and, correspondingly, the percentage of caves on public land is much higher. I don't recall what it was at the time, something like 50% perhaps, but it should be simple enough to get current figures for public vs. private land ownership for each state. Again, a better analysis would consider the cave-bearing land specifically.

In the end, it was clear that the vast majority of known US caves are located on private land, which is not very surprising when you consider the demographics of the most cave-rich states - Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and Alabama - which account for most of the known caves. Of course, it may be that there are many, many undiscovered (or known but unreported and unrecorded) caves on the vast public lands of the western US. Also, karst is not randomly distributed across the country and state boundaries are political divisions rather than geological, so state to state comparisons (and region to region comparisons) are probably not that meaningful.

If I were considering this question today, I think I would begin by examining the geologic and ownership maps for each state to determine the amount of karst land in public and private ownership. Applying that ratio to the known or estimated number of reported caves in each state, based on the NSS cave files, would give a first-cut estimate of the number publicly and privately owned caves. Further research and discussion with knowledgeable sources could then refine that estimate.

[wyandottecaver]

Nothing against Dick, but in our discussion on this thread viewtopic.php?f=26&t=4300&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=caves+by+state&start=75#p50629 it became obvious that the NSS files were in many many cases not authoritive even by state. Similiarly, the culver article was based on NSS information (I e-mailed him).

[Bill Putnam]

No argument from me that the NSS cave files may not be authoritative for any given state. I would never expect that, since they are not intended to be and by their very nature (based on reports and publications) cannot ever be complete. But in the absence of any better source of information they provide at least an estimate. Taken in context, they serve as a starting point, which is why Culver et al. used them and supplemented that base with information from other sources. The map they produced was very interesting, and confirmed my own conclusions from my very rough earlier attempt. Most of the known caves are in the east, where most of the land is privately owned. Of course, most of the people are in the east and so are most of the roads, so the vast karstlands of the west shown on the Culver map as sparsely populated with or devoid of caves are probably in reality just loaded with thousands and thousands of caves waiting to be discovered and explored.

[pighunter]

Thanks guys.

The NSS cave files will be a good enough source. I was hoping for something in a published paper, and it probably does exist but I'm guessing it will be based on similar data or be fairly conservative.

As for fed. lands in general. Several of the departments have relatively good grips on numbers but as mentioned, the western states could be largely unrepresented. DOI and the Forest Service (DOA) have numbers to give but, largely, the rest of the federal land managing agencies are not open about it.

I've got solid info on NPS managed lands if anyone is truly interested I'd be glad to pass that along. They manage the most numbers of caves in the United States. That data has been published and I've updated some of that.

Thanks again...