Beneath The Forest

Welcome to the Beneath The Forest newsletter! Beneath The Forest is the official US Forest Service newsletter about everything caves and karst on National Forest lands. Here you can find all sorts of articles about cave explorations and inventories, speleothem repairs, paleoclimate research, and many more topics. Articles in the newsletter were solicited from and written by cave specialists from forests all across the agency, and our partners in the caving community, highlighting the wide variety of cave and karst features from Alaska to Oregon to Kentucky.
Celebrating Caves at the 2023 National Speleological Society Convention
The National Speleological Society (NSS) held its annual convention in Elkins, WV the week of June 26, 2023.
Celebrating Blanchard Springs Caverns' 50th Anniversary
Blanchard Springs Caverns celebrates its 50th year of operation on July 7, 2023.
Significant Caves Designation Call for National Forest System Lands
Use the updated Significant Cave Nomination Form to nominate caves in your area!
Historically, the Beneath The Forest newsletter was published biannually as a PDF and hosted on the University of South Florida’s Karst Information Portal (KIP) “Digital Collections” library. While the newsletter has not been published since the fall of 2019, back issues are available.
Three years later, the newsletter is being re-launched as a public-facing standalone webpage on the US Forest Service’s Caves and Karst webpage. Instead of biannual publication, articles will be published as they are received by the agency and will be grouped by publication date. Articles will also contain many fabulous photographs of beautiful cave and karst features. We encourage you to take some time to read through all the articles and learn more about the diverse cave and karst resources on National Forest lands!