Cave team leaves for China

Eleven cave explorers and surveyors left Western Saturday in hopes of improving water shortage problems in the Hunan province of China.

Pat Kambesis, a research associate of Western’s Hoffman Environmental Research Institute, will lead the group, which will assist karst hydrologists from the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences and the Hunan Hydrology Bureau by mapping large caves and underground rivers.

The trip is in support of a project that will eventually build an in-cave dam along a river to raise water levels almost 600 feet.

That water will be used for communities on a plateau above the cave system.

In the region where the group will be, 10 percent of the residents live in poverty, partly because of poor water conditions.

-Keith Farner