Baker, Priscilla

Goldscheider, Nico

Groves, Chris

Yuexia, Wu

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William B. White and Elizabeth L. White (USA): their contributionsto karst hydrogeology discussed in an interviewNico Goldscheider & Priscilla Baker & Wu Yuexia &Chris GrovesKeywords Proﬁles . Interview . USA . Karst . CavesIntroductionHydrogeologists and speleologists all over the worldrecognise William B. White (born 1934, USA) andElizabeth L. White (born 1936, USA) for their achieve-ments in the ﬁelds of karst hydrogeology and caveresearch, and have learned a great deal from their books,papers and lectures. It is also thanks to the Whites thatmany aspects of the speciﬁc hydrogeological character-istics of carbonate aquifers, such as turbulent ﬂow in cavesand conduits, are generally acknowledged today. Amaz-ingly, both of them earned their merits in other subjectareas and dedicated only a portion of their time to karsthydrogeology. However, cave and karst research is thetopic on which they worked as a couple, at least partly,and their karst-related work is not only driven by scientiﬁcinterest but also by personal interest and passion.Elizabeth White is a civil engineer who worked notonly on stormwater management and geological hazards,but also on cement, the beneﬁcial use of ﬂy ash, and othertopics. Trained as an engineer, she was working ongraduate hydrology research in the statistical characteriza-tion of drainage catchments of the Appalachian Mountainsof the eastern US when she became intrigued by thebehaviour of karst, and has had a passion for the subjectever since. In particular, she has made important contri-butions to the understanding of surface-water dynamicswithin karst-drainage systems.William White is a researcher with universal scientiﬁcinterest, who has spent most of his academic career at ThePennsylvania State University. Although citation statisticsdo not mean everything, his are impressive: he hasauthored or co-authored more than 400 papers, more than200 in Web of Science (Thomson Scientiﬁc 2008); hismost successful paper deals with Raman spectroscopy andhas been cited over 1,000 times (Knight and White 1989).He has also investigated other spectroscopic techniques,crystal chemistry, glass and materials science, nuclearwaste problems, and many other topics, and published hisﬁndings in about 60 different journals, often the best intheir ﬁelds. The ﬁrst karst hydrogeology paper on the listof his most-cited articles comes somewhere around rank30. Still, he is often and rightly considered the “Grand OldMan” of cave and karst research in the US, and maybeworldwide.During the workshop “Current Technology in KarstHydrogeology and Water Resources” that took place at theSouthwest University of China in Beibei, Chongqing, 7–14 October 2007, the authors had the opportunity to talkwith the Whites about their life and research. A transcriptof the complete interview is available (see Electronicsupplementary material) and the interview itself can beseen on the Hydrogeologist Time Capsule website (http://timecapsule.iah.org). In the interview, which was bothinstructive and entertaining, the Whites were asked howthey organise their scientiﬁc cooperation as a couple andthe writing of joint papers (to which they responded “wedidn’t get a divorce over any of these”), and Elizabeth wasasked how her husband could cope with such a wide rangeof research topics (“by not sleeping”). This proﬁle focuseson the scientiﬁc contributions of William and ElizabethWhite to karst hydrogeology (Fig. 1).Received: 14 February 2008 /Accepted: 10 June 2008Published online: 11 July 2008* Springer-Verlag 2008N. Goldscheider ())Centre of Hydrogeology (CHYN),University of Neuchâtel,Rue Emile-Argand 11, 2009, Neuchâtel, Switzerlande-mail: nico.goldscheider@unine.chTel.: +41-32-7182645P. Baker :C. GrovesDepartment of Geology/Geography,Western Kentucky University,1906 College Heights Blvd., Bowling Green, KY 42101, USAW. YuexiaSchool of Geographical Sciences,Southwest University,No. 2 Tiansheng Rd., Chongqing, 400715, ChinaElectronic supplementary material The online version of thisarticle (doi:10.1007/s10040-008-0337-7) contains supplementarymaterial, which is available to authorized users.Hydrogeology Journal (2009) 17: 261–263 DOI 10.1007/s10040-008-0337-7The importance of caves and conduitsfor groundwater ﬂowAlthough the foundations of karst geomorphology andhydrology were laid about a century ago and Europeanresearchers did pioneer work in this ﬁeld, mainly in theAlps, Dinarides, and Jura Region, the role of conduits forgroundwater ﬂow was underestimated or ignored until afew decades ago. The Whites helped to bring theimportance of caves and conduits to the attention of theAmerican and international hydrogeology community.William explained he was “trying to penetrate theconceptual framework that the traditional hydrogeologisthas used for years and years and years: that porous mediaﬂow is the name of the game”. He continued: “The idea,by the professional hydrologist in this 1960s time frame,was that caves were at most a little blip in the ﬂow-ﬁeld.Cavers were getting carried away by the fact they couldgo in there and splash around in the water but really backin the rock there was this uniform ﬂow-ﬁeld movingthrough the mass of the rock and the cave itself was just ablip, a small distortion at best, and of no particularimportance. Victor Schmidt and I wrote a paper back in1966, essentially trying to establish that most of the waterin this drainage basin was moving through the caves.”This was probably the ﬁrst paper in Water ResourcesResearch about caves (White and Schmidt 1966). Otherearly, enduring, and inﬂuential works on karst hydrogeologyinclude the development of conceptual models for limestoneaquifers (White 1969) and one of the ﬁrst studies to look atthe time-dependence of karst spring water chemistry as ahydrogeological tool (Shuster and White 1971). WilliamWhite’s efforts to make speleological research sociallyacceptable in the scientiﬁc community are also documentedin a paper about ‘the cave environment’ published inScience (Poulson and White 1969).Elizabeth made her ﬁrst great contribution to karsthydrogeology during her Master’s thesis, when sheanalysed a series of watersheds in Pennsylvania, USAand noticed that karstic basins behaved completelydifferent than all of the others, which were mostlyunderlain by shale and sandstone. She discovered thatpeak ﬂoods in karstic basins tend to be much moresubdued because water storage in caves and karst aquifersclips the tops off the hydrographs, a recognition that waspublished in the Journal of Hydrology (White and Reich1970). Other papers followed, in which she continued totransfer concepts from surface hydrology to the karst andcave environment such as a paper about ‘channelhydraulics of free-surface streams in caves’ that sheprepared together with her husband (White and White1970). Also, as a practicing engineer, she was confrontedwith the speciﬁc nature of limestone terrains and theassociated hazards such as the collapse of cavities, oftenoverlooked by conventional engineers without experien-ces in karst research and caving.In 1988, William published his textbook on theGeomorphology and Hydrology of Karst Terrains, whichis still a standard reference (White 1988). Only one yearlater, the two Whites published the edited volume KarstHydrology: Concepts from the Mammoth Cave Area,which also helped to make hydrogeologists aware of theimportance of caves for groundwater ﬂow (White andWhite 1989). These books amalgamate the practical ﬁeldexperiences of cavers and the quantitative approach of anatural scientist and an engineer. Two other volumes aboutcaves and karst science came out only recently, illustratingthat the concept of ‘retirement’ does not apply to theWhites (Culver and White 2005; White and Culver 2007).However, William has reduced his 17 research ﬁelds to amore manageable 15.Selected research highlights: limestonedissolution and sediment transportIt is beyond the scope of this proﬁle to summarise andevaluate all contributions that the Whites have made tokarst research, including papers about speciﬁc caves andkarst regions in the USA and worldwide, karst geomor-phology, processes of cavern breakdown and sinkholecollapse, soils on karst, and other topics. Among thevarious research topics in the ﬁeld of karst hydrogeology,two aspects were selected that had a great inﬂuence onfurther research and that can still provide inspiration forfuture hydrogeological research.The ﬁrst is limestone dissolution kinetics. At ﬁrstglance to non-practitioners of the ﬁeld, this does not seemto be directly related to hydrogeology, but in fact it is:ﬂowing groundwater charged with CO2 and thus under-saturated with calcite, creates dissolutional conduits whichin turn act as the principal ﬂowpaths for groundwater.However, in the late 1950s, the understanding oflimestone dissolution kinetics identiﬁed a problem thatconfounded karst scientists for a number of years: Howcan undersaturated water enter into fractured limestonewithout getting saturated rapidly? In other words, how cancaves exist? William White found a ﬁrst answer to thisquestion: Water in contact with limestone rapidly reachesFig. 1 William and Elizabeth White in front of the non-scientiﬁcwing of their library, in their home in Pennsylvania, USA262Hydrogeology Journal (2009) 17: 261–263 DOI 10.1007/s10040-008-0337-7a saturation level of about 80%, but after that point, thedissolution rate drops dramatically and ﬁnally becomesvery slow. Therefore, slightly undersaturated water canactually enter deep into the limestone and cause initialkarstiﬁcation, and thus create initial groundwater ﬂow-paths (White 1977; Rauch and White 1977). Later, otherresearchers continued to work on this problem anddeveloped sophisticated models to simulate the processof speleogenesis and groundwater ﬂow through evolvingconduit networks.The second topic, on which William is still activelyworking today, is the transport of sediments through karstsystems. The Whites were among the ﬁrst to investigatethe dynamics of sediment transport in caves (White andWhite 1968) and they also recognised the importance ofthresholds for karst hydrogeology: there is a thresholdwhen a limestone fracture transforms into a conduitaquifer; there is a threshold between laminar ﬂow andturbulent ﬂow; and there are thresholds when the aquiferstarts to transmit clastic sediments (Herman et al. 2008).Different types of contaminants are associated with sedi-ments. Conduit sediments can act as reservoirs for heavymetals (Vesper and White 2004) and the highest heavymetal loads in karst spring waters can thus be observedduring storm ﬂow (Vesper and White 2003). Densenonaqueous phase liquids (DNAPLs) also tend to accu-mulate in cave sediments from which they are remobilisedand transported to the spring during ﬂoods (Loop andWhite 2001). The importance of thresholds and the role ofsediments for contaminant transport and attenuation areamong the topics where William sees the need for furtherresearch in the ﬁeld of karst hydrogeology (White 2002).Advice to the younger generationThe Whites were also asked for their advice to theyounger generation, and William immediately answered,“The ﬁrst is not to pay any attention to your professors.”More speciﬁcally, he advised that “the major breakthroughoccurs when someone with a very young brain sees theworld differently than all of these distinguished peoplewith old brains.” However, the Whites are an impressiveexample of distinguished people with young brains, andthey continue to provide inspiration for a youngergeneration of researchers.Acknowledgements We thank Enviroscan, Inc., Lancaster, Penn-sylvania, USA, for sponsoring the videotape of the interview on theHydrogeologist Time Capsule.ReferencesCulver DC, White WB (2005) Encyclopedia of caves. Academic,San Diego, CA, 654 ppHerman EK, Toran L, White WB (2008) Threshold events in springdischarge: evidence from sediment and continuous water levelmeasurement. J Hydrol 351(1–2):98–106Knight DS, White WB (1989) Characterization of diamond ﬁlms byRaman spectroscopy. J Mater Res 4(2):385–393Loop CM, White WB (2001) A conceptual model for DNAPLtransport in karst ground water basins. Ground Water 39(1):119–127Poulson TL, White WB (1969) The cave environment. Science165:971–981Rauch HW, White WB (1977) Dissolution kinetics of carbonaterocks. 1. Effects of lithology on dissolution rate. Water ResourRes 13:381–394Shuster ET, White WB (1971) Seasonal ﬂuctuations in thechemistry of limestone springs: a possible means for character-izing carbonate aquifers. J Hydrol 14:93–128Thomson Scientiﬁc (2008) ISI Web of Knowledge, Web of Science,released April 2008. Thomson Scientiﬁc, Philadelphia, PA.http://apps.isiknowledge.com. Cited June 2008Vesper DJ, White WB (2003) Metal transport to karst springs duringstorm ﬂow: an example from Fort Campbell, Kentucky/Tennessee, USA. J Hydrol 276(1–4):20–36Vesper DJ, White WB (2004) Spring and conduits sediments asstorage reservoirs for heavy metals in karst aquifers. EnvironGeol 45:481–493White EL, Reich BM (1970) Behavior of annual ﬂoods in limestonebasins in Pennsylvania. J Hydrol 10:193–198White EL, White WB (1968) Dynamics of sediment transport inlimestone caves. Nat Speleol Soc Bull 30:115–129White WB (1969) Conceptual models for limestone aquifers.Ground Water 7(3):15–21White WB (1977) Role of solution kinetics in the development ofkarst aquifers. Int Assoc Hydrogeol Mem 12:503–517White WB (1988) Geomorphology and Hydrology of KarstTerrains. Oxford University Press, New York, 464 ppWhite WB (2002) Karst hydrology: recent developments and openquestions. Eng Geol 65(2–3):85–105White WB, Culver DC (2007) Benchmark papers in karst science.Karst Waters Institute Special Publication 11, Karst WatersInstitute, Leesburg, VA, 590 ppWhite WB, Schmidt VA (1966) Hydrology of a karst area in east-central West Virginia. Water Resour Res 2:549–560White WB, White EL (1970) Channel hydraulics of free-surfacestreams in caves. Caves Karst 12(6):41–48White WB, White EL (eds) (1989) Karst hydrology: concepts fromthe Mammoth Cave area. Reinhold, New York, 346 pp263Hydrogeology Journal (2009) 17: 261–263 DOI 10.1007/s10040-008-0337-7

William B. White and Elizabeth L. White (USA): their contributions to karst hydrogeology discussed in an interview

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William B. White and Elizabeth L. White (USA): their contributions to karst hydrogeology discussed in an interview

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