The Henderson State University Cave Biology Research Team will be the featured presenter at this year’s Kane Allen Memorial Lecture at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts at 6 p.m. March 15.
Henderson State’s Cave Biology Research Team has been researching the ecology of caves since 2011. Initially concentrating on undeveloped recesses deep within Blanchard Springs Caverns in northern Arkansas, since 2019 they have been working in caves in central Tennessee. The team has received funding from NASA, The National Cave and Karst Research Institute, The Tennessee Cave Survey, the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, and the Explorers Club.
The team will present the lecture “Blue Goo and Petroleum Ponds: Unique Central Tennessee Caves as Potential New Models for Life in Subsurface Martian Environments.” The presentation will be held in the Rainey Room of ASMSA’s Creativity and Innovation Complex and will feature some hands-on elements. The lecture is open to the public.
The lecture is named in honor Kane Allen of Dover, who was 17 and a student at ASMSA when he died in February 2007. Among his many interests, he was concerned about global warming and the environment. His family established the lecture series in his honor through a gift to the school.