Scientists used a handheld laser scanner to build the first-ever 3D maps of caves beneath the Grand Canyon's North Rim, where one spring supplies all the drinking water for the park's six million-plus annual guests, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
A team from Northern Arizona University scanned roughly six miles of tunnels and crawlways across three caves, including Roaring Springs Cave, the source of the park's entire water supply. The caves sit within layers of Redwall and Muav limestone, buried over 2,300 feet below ground on the Kaibab Plateau.
Snow that melts on the plateau's surface trickles down through fractures and fault lines, and previous dye tests showed it can move 12.4 miles and arrive at springs within days.
That speed is the problem. Water passes through the porous limestone so fast that the rock barely filters it. If wildfire runoff or bacteria enter a connected sinkhole, drinking water operations could be interrupted until the problem is resolved.
Until this study, scientists relied on hand-drawn, two-dimensional cave maps to piece together how water moves underground. Those sketches lacked the detail needed to track flow paths across a wide area.
The 3D laser scans changed that, showing that water carves its routes along consistent crack patterns and tilted rock layers in all three caves, spread across the North Rim and separated by over 18 miles. The patterns point to ancient fault activity as a force behind the region's underground water paths.
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"The dissertation work was making the geologic connection between what we might see at the surface versus what we might see hundreds or thousands of feet belowground," said Professor Temuulen Sankey of Northern Arizona University to Phys.org.
"It's like looking at a black box," added lead researcher Blase LaSala. "You see what comes in and what comes out, but it's very hard to quantify what's going on in there."
Pinpointing these underground routes gives park officials a better chance of tracing pollution to its source and keeping the Grand Canyon'sonly water supply safe.
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