Bigfork cavers give talk before huge crowd

At first, it was just about exploring places few people had ever seen. The chance to rappel off cliffs at weekly practices also was attractive.

But almost three years after its inception, Bigfork High School’s Cave Club has expanded its repertoire beyond simply having fun. The group, led by adviser Hans Bodenhamer, focuses on conservation and mapping in addition to exploration.

Their efforts have earned the club recognition from federal agencies and recently gave club members the opportunity speak in front of thousands of people at the world’s largest Geographic Information System conference.

Cave Club members and recent Bigfork graduates Tia Bakker and Ernie Cottle, as well as Bodenhamer, addressed more than 10,000 people Monday at the opening plenary session of the Environmental Sciences Research Institute 2010 International User Conference in San Diego.

While the club has made several presentations to various groups over the years, the conference was the largest crowd they’ve ever addressed.

“It was probably one of the scariest things I’ve ever done,” Bakker said Thursday.

Each year, an academic group is chosen to showcase how it used GIS. Bigfork’s Cave Club has been using GIS software since spring 2009, when it used a $10,000 grant from Best Buy to create a GIS lab to assist its monitoring efforts.

The club’s GIS lab and connection to the institute’s educational branch led to the club being selected as the conference’s academic group.

Bodenhamer, Bakker and Cottle sported hard hats with head lamps during their presentation. Bakker and Cottle described the work they’ve done through the club, including studying microinvertebrates inside caves and carefully monitoring caves’ geologic features.

GIS has helped Cave Club members map features in cracks and caverns few people have seen — including government officials who are in charge of preserving them. Students map and document geologic features to provide baseline information about the caves.

That baseline information will help resource managers with future monitoring. Information provided by the club also could help search-and-rescue efforts and help document the effects of climate change on aquatic communities.

While club members have explored caves throughout Western Montana, many of their trips have been to caves in Glacier National Park.

Their monitoring work and graffiti-removal efforts in the park recently earned the club a 2009 Presidential Environmental Youth Award from the Environmental Protection agency.

“We are particularly impressed with the quality and detail of the work the Cave Club has provided,” Glacier Park’s chief of science and resource management Jack Potter said.

The park has used Cave Club recommendations to plan future monitoring efforts toward protecting cave resources and is recommending the club for work in other parks, Potter said.

“The educational benefits of the Cave Club’s discoveries, both as information for park educational programs and to the larger scientific community, have been impressive,” he said. “Some of the features identified and mapped by the Cave Club have regional geological significance, emphasizing the importance of the group’s work.”

That work wouldn’t have been as accessible to other groups with GIS.

“We’re very pleased to see this after-school club getting so involved with GIS,” said Charlie Fitzpatrick, director of ESRI. “It proves that any teacher anywhere could start a club and help kids do powerful things with GIS.”

Bodenhamer echoed that sentiment during the ESRI presentation. He urged people at the conference to connect with teachers and student groups and give them opportunities to use GIS.

“Find them. Make a connection. Show them how they can use GIS in their project, and the rest will be magic,” Bodenhamer told the audience.