Landscape Ecology of Mammoth Cave: How Surface and Cave Ecosystems Influence Each Other

At first, the surface of Mammoth Cave National Park and the caves below may seem like two different landscapes or even different worlds, but these surface and underground spaces interact in ways that are sometimes surprising. The roughly 645 documented kilometers (400 miles) of Mammoth Cave are part of a regional karst landscape, which is defined by subterranean drainage. From the southeast to the northwest corners of the park, there is a gradient of decreasing extent of karst development, which corresponds to the regional dip of the bedrock. The major cave-bearing carbonates (limestone and dolomite) are barely exposed in the northwestern part of the park, and so cave development there is in the earliest stages. The hydrogeology and landforms of this highly varied karst landscape have profound effects upon vegetation ecosystems. Surface rivers, cave aquatic, and cave terrestrial ecosystems are all largely dependent upon food energy from photosynthesis in the vegetation ecosystems. Therefore, this chapter will examine physical aspects of the landscape that determine what type of vegetation is found where, the status of park vegetation, and address how all the ecosystems interact.