Author: Alan

NSS Expedition to Mindanao, Philippines | Elaine Scott | March 2015 from SF Bay Caving on Vimeo.

Ronald Bourret talks about the 2012 expedition to Loferer Schacht, an 800 meter deep cave in the Austrian Alps. Ron has been caving for more than 20 years in the US, Canada, and Europe. This was his sixth expedition to Loferer Schacht.

Walt Vennum presents “Field Geology in Antarctica” which will cover a bit about the geology and, what it is like to live and work in a really remote, inhospitable and (sometimes) beautiful place for an extended period of time.

As a member of Diablo Grotto since the early-mid 90s, Walt has caved in both the Western and Eastern US as well as Mexico, Guatemala and Cuba. Walt’s interest in big wall rock climbing in Yosemite led him into caving. He earned a PhD in geology from Stanford in the early 1970s after doing a dissertation on the igneous rocks of Castle Crags Wilderness Area in northern California. He has worked for the USGS in SE Alaska, Antarctica and Saudi Arabia and then became a geology professor at Sonoma State University (SSU) near Santa Rosa. He has since retired from SSU.

Bruce White presents on his experience at Lechuguilla Cave.

Dr. G.O. Graening presents on the “Bioinventory of the Marble Mountain Karst”.

G.O. got into caving by chance:  when he started his doctoral program in biology at the University of Arkansas (in the heart of the Ozark karst region), he joined Dr. Art Brown’s lab, who specialized in speleobiology and cavefishes.    In 1999, G.O.  began studying the foodwebs of the Ozark cavefish, and got hooked on caving and cave science.  He expanded Dr. Brown’s research program into a 2-State inventory of cave life in Arkansas and Oklahoma, which culminated in the new hardbound book “The Cave Life of Oklahoma and Arkansas”.   G.O. then worked for The Nature Conservancy, and helped launch their subterranean biodiversity conservation initiative nationally, as well as in the Yucatan and Jamaica.  G.O. moved back to California in 2004, where he joined the Mother Lode Grotto, and began studying the cave life in California.  Collaborating with other speleologists and biologists, G.O. and his team have found several new species of cave arthropods, and he hopes to complete the California survey in a few years and produce a book on the cave life of California.

Tracy Audisio presents “Evolution underground: Cave arthropods of California and the Pacific Northwest”. Her talk will provide an introduction to the evolution of cave obligate animals and an overview of arthropods frequently encountered in caves. The talk will conclude with current cave spider research and exciting new discoveries in California and the Pacific Northwest.

Tracy is a graduate student studying cave spiders in a joint program between the California Academy of Sciences and San Francisco State University. Tracy began caving with the Stanislaus Speleological Society in 2004, and is affiliated with the Cave Research Foundation and serves on the Advisory Board for the Western Cave Conservancy.