Please wait...
About This Project
The Tongass National Forest in Alaska contains both damaged and undamaged caves. These caves are homes to a bacteria-rich mineraloid formation called moonmilk. Microbial communities play critical roles in maintaining ecosystem stability. This motivated our team of cavers and cave explorers to travel to remote field sites this summer to collect and analyze samples and attempt to answer the question: Does human-caused damage to cave formations change the moonmilk ecosystem?

Browse Other Projects on Experiment
Related Projects
Drone-based Monitoring to Enhance Whale Shark Conservation in Bahía de La Paz Refuge Area in Baja California Sur, México
Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) face growing threats from human activities, particularly in ecotourism hotspots...
Automated Monitoring for the Resilience of Marine Ecosystems in the Dominican Republic (MARE-RD)
Caribbean marine biodiversity is under critical threat from climate change and human pressures, losing...
Manipulating structural complexity to bolster restoration efforts on Hawaiian coral reefs
This study investigates how altering module structures impacts coral fragment fusion, growth, and survival...