CLASSIFYING CAVE POOLS IN CARLSBAD CAVERNS NATIONAL PARK, NEW MEXICO

The Guadalupe Mountains in New Mexico is home to Carlsbad Caverns National Park; a splendid cave system that is well known for its large rooms. Cave pools, which line the floors of many rooms in Carlsbad, have beautiful and complex formations. Some of these formations are called biothems, which are a subtype of speleothems that have biologic origins. Biothems can form almost anywhere in a cave pool. The problem with biothems is that they do not form in every pool. A classification scheme of cave pools might help to determining the factors involved in biothem formation. A classification scheme was created using a few different factors. These included depth, surface area, and edge features. The edge features were used most often to help create this scheme. Shelfstone, flowstone, and rimstone dams are the most common edge features and are the main factor in determining what class a pool will occupy. A total of eight classes were made using the data from the 136 pools. Class one and two pools are typically high flow and have a high percentage of rimstone dams. Pools from class two and three have a high percentage of flowstone and low percentages of rimstone dams and shelfstone. Class four pools are made up of equal portions of shelfstone and flowstone. Class five and six contains the pools that have the greatest percentage of shelfstone and the lowest percentage of flowstone. Class seven is made up of pools that contain any amount of convex shelfstone. Class eight pools contain no shelfstone and are made up of cave pearls and cave pearl nests. This data has shown that the pools in Carlsbad Caverns can be put into a classification scheme. This will help in understanding the formation of biothems and cave pools. The classification scheme presented is a first try at creating a scheme for pools and may not work for other caves. This is because the data collected is still only a small portion of the entire data the cave system in Carlsbad has to offer. Not only that, but each cave may have its own unique geologic setting that could play a role in determining what types of cave pools are produced.