Assessing the sensitivity of water to surface, soil, rock, and cave conditions in Fitton Cave, northern Arkansas

Fitton Cave, located within the Buffalo National River in north-central Arkansas, offers a window into a relatively pristine portion of the Ozark Plateaus Aquifer. This region is one of the largest karst aquifers in the United States, providing more than 1.8 million people with drinking water. Understanding what happens to water as it moves from the surface to subsurface is requisite for utilization, management, and sustainability of karst aquifers as water resources. As population pressures increase, assessment of geochemical and hydrologic processes from pristine systems such as Fitton Cave will prove invaluable for providing baseline conditions. By integrating vascular plant biomarkers and GIS, along with traditional dye tracing and geochemical analyses, we are better able to define the sources of chemical change to water as it interacts along flow paths with soil, rock, and cave conditions in the karst system.