Date of Award

5-8-2020

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science - Geology

Department

Geology

First Advisor

Dr. Melinda Faulkner

Second Advisor

Dr. Kevin Stafford

Third Advisor

Dr. Wesley Brown

Fourth Advisor

Dr. I-Kuai Hung

Abstract

Fort Hood Military Installation is located within the Lampasas Cut Plain in Bell and Coryell counties, Texas, and is characterized by exposures of Lower Cretaceous Trinity and Fredericksburg Group carbonates. The Shell Mountain Province is an elevated plateau located in western Fort Hood utilized by the military for heavy mechanical (troop and wheeled) maneuver training and hosts significant surficial and subsurface karst. Ongoing karst inventories in western Fort Hood conducted by range managers have documented over 100 individual karst features. Recent studies utilizing LiDAR and remote sensing techniques delineated karst potential in this area and identified over 13,909 discrete depressions.

This study used electrical resistivity to characterize subsurface karst potential associated with two known caves in the Shell Mountain Province. Existing cave maps from the Texas Speleological Survey and the Division of Natural Resource Management at Fort Hood were used to select areas in which there may be inaccessible passages. The AGI SuperSting was implemented using the dipole-dipole array method to complete 2-D and 3-D surveys at each of the cave locations. Results showed significant inaccessible subsurface karst features; these data will be utilized by the Fort Hood Natural Resources Management Branch range managers to create karst management plans in Fort Hood training areas to support military readiness and protect environmentally sensitive habitats.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Share

COinS

Tell us how this article helped you.

 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.