Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 29, 1991 TAG: 9103290219
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-8 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: JOE TENNIS/ SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
It's just a model, but a graphic lesson in ecology - throwing trash into a sinkhole is like throwing it into the water supply, says a Radford University professor.
A sinkhole is a depression that allows water to funnel beneath the ground.
"And anytime you're dumping trash into it, it's like dumping it into a piping system," said Ernst Kastning, who teaches geology at Radford.
To prove the point, Kastning and his wife, Karen, also a geology instructor at Radford, helped coordinate "Buried Treasures: Caves of the Virginias," a museum exhibit on display at the university's Heth Hall ballroom.
The exhibit is open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. today and 7:30 a.m.-midnight Monday through April 8.
Included in the exhibit is the model of a sinkhole and the pipe sucking water from a source filled with trash. A sign asks: "Would you want to drink out of this?"
But the display is more than the hazards of trash in sinkholes. It also displays and explains various geological wonders found in Southwestern Virginia.
Models of stalactites from a cave's ceiling and stalagmites of lime built from the cave floor swirl out of a corner of the display. Inches away, a model of a travertine mound is made of papier-mache and covered with resin.
A few feet from that is a replica of an orange cave salamander with black spots, usually found in moist caves in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma as well as the Appalachian Mountain regions.
The antennas and bodies of two crayfish models look fiercely ready to attack. But do not fear - these lobster-look-alikes also are under glass.
Why models and not excavated artifacts?
"Because we don't want to destroy the real thing," Kastning replied.
What's more, the Cave Conservancy of the Virginias, which helped fund the project with the Richmond Area Speleological Society, threatened to cut off funds if the cavers decided to use display items culled from actual caves.
Kastning hopes both children and college students will be attracted to the exhibit.
"We're trying to show the scientific, biological and also the historic value of caves," he said.
Kastning, who has been exploring caves for 26 years, contributed many photographs to the exhibit's walls.
Jon Jager, curator of exhibits at the Virginia Museum of Natural History, designed the layout and some of the art at the exhibit, which will be set up at different sites all over the state.
Radford is the first site of many, Jager said. "We want to reach as many people in the state as possible."
The traveling exhibit will move to Martinsville for the April 20 grand reopening of the Virginia Museum of Natural History.
Afterwards, the cave display will return to the New River Valley in September, this time at Virginia Tech. The exhibit probably will find a permanent home at a state park, Jager said.
by CNB