Last Modified: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 8:22 p.m.
During the 2000-01 drought, a few of us wandered around the riverbed of the Peace River to see whether we could find any more places where the river was flowing into a hole in the ground.
These sinkholes, chasms and other holes are known technically as "karst features," a geological term in use since the late 19th century to describe areas where rock is dissolved by water, creating conduits between and within surface and underground geology.
The latest news about these holes in the bottom of the Peace River is that scientists at the U.S. Geologic Survey office in Tampa have figured out how much water is going down the holes instead of flowing downriver as it once did.
The five-year, $926,000 study was funded by the Southwest Florida Water Management District.
The study, conducted by Patricia Metz and Bill Lewelling, concluded that an average of 11 million gallons a day disappears into the ground along a two-mile stretch of the river between Bartow and Homeland.
These losses contribute to the common dry season phenomenon in the past 30 years in which little or no water flows down this portion of the river. FULL STORY
