By Mike Sever
Record-Courier staff writer
An ecologist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources is seeking funds to do a study of caves in the Lake Erie watershed, including several in northern Portage County.
Caves in Portage County?
"Believe it or not, you do have a few. About five are known for sure," said Erin Hazelton, with the division of Natural Areas and Preserves.
There are others, based on conjectures and descriptions from surveys done in the 1950s and 1970s.
"Who knows if the caves are still there," she said.
As might be expected, most of the reported caves are in the Nelson Ledges area in the northeastern tip of Portage.
True caves, unlike rock shelters, were not considered likely in northeast Ohio because of the sandstone bedrock in the area.
Unlike rock shelters, or deep ledges such as Hocking Hills State Park near Columbus, real caves are deep enough to have a "dark zone," with a complete absence of light.
Some of the caves she has surveyed go back a couple hundred feet, Hazelton said.
Hazelton's grant request shows 56 caves in 11 counties to be surveyed, including the 15 in Summit, eight in Portage, 12 in Geauga and four in Lake counties.
Information from the surveys will be used to update various databases, including the state's listed species by the Division of Wildlife, the state's Natural Heritage database. It is used for environmental reviews and data requests, and to create maps of cave locations in the Lake Erie Watershed.
A review of documentation from the 1950s by the Ohio Cave Survey indicates there are 41 additional cave locations in the Lake Erie watershed that have not been studied.
The first-ever comprehensive study of the animals and other living things in caves was started in May 2007 and conducted by the ODNR's Division of Natural Areas and Preserves.
That study surveyed 190 caves throughout Ohio, but only 59 were located in the Lake Erie Watershed.
The longest cave in Ohio is Ohio Caverns near Cincinnati, with about three miles of passages. The second longest is Wild Cave in Adams County, which is almost a mile long.
Hazelton said she hopes to get funding to investigate whatever is living in the caves, from bats down to invertebrates.
"Anything that's alive, bats to very small teeny critters, mites and spring tails, salamanders (macro vertebrates). If there is water, then that adds a whole new dimension. We've been doing this for the past few summers in western Ohio. We've found quite a few new species that have never been found before. It's really exciting science," Hazelton said.
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E-mail:
msever@recordpub.com
Phone: 330-298-1128