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This is an Earthcache. There is no container to find or log to sign. Every Earthcache includes an earth sciences lesson. Please visit the posted coordinates and then send an email with the answers to the questions.
Sixty miles south of Atlanta, Warm Springs, Georgia grew up around natural springs with water that flows year round. Warm Springs, located on the lower slopes of Pine Mountain in Meriwether County, Georgia has long been known for its healing waters. Native Americans used to bring their wounded warriors to the springs. In the antebellum period a minor resort developed at the springs.
It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who first gave national recognition to Warm Springs when, in 1924, he visited the town's naturally heated mineral springs as treatment for his polio related paralysis. President Roosevelt found relief there for his polio from the mid-1920s until his death at the Little White House, his home at Warm Springs, in 1945.
The public pools closed soon after Roosevelt's death but Georgia State Parks recently refurbished the pools and, although they are now mostly empty, a touch pool still exists where visitors are welcome to feel the actual warm spring water and listen to information about its' history. The springs are not available for public use as a bath/spa resort, but are used by the Roosevelt Institute for therapeutic purposes. The Springs Complex is open daily for tours from 9:00 am until 4:45 pm except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.
A spring is a water resource formed when the side of a hill, a valley bottom or other excavation intersects a flowing body of ground water at or below the local water table, below which the subsurface material is saturated with water. A spring is the result of an aquifer being filled to the point that the water overflows onto the land surface. They range in size from intermittent seeps, which flow only after much rain, to huge pools flowing hundreds of millions of gallons daily. Dependent upon the constancy of the water source (rainfall or snowmelt that infiltrates the earth), a spring may be ephemeral (intermittent) or perennial (continuous). Springs may be formed in any sort of rock. Small ones are found in many places. When weak carbonic acid (formed by rainwater percolating through organic matter in the soil) enters these fractures it dissolves bedrock. When it reaches a horizontal crack or a layer of non-dissolving rock such as sandstone or shale, it begins to cut sideways, forming an underground stream. As the process continues, the water hollows out more rock, eventually admitting an airspace, at which point the spring stream can be considered a cave. This process is supposed to take tens to hundreds of thousands of years to complete.
Thermal springs are ordinary springs except that the water is warm and, in some places, hot, such as in the bubbling mud springs in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Many thermal springs occur in regions of recent volcanic activity and are fed by water heated by contact with hot rocks far below the surface. Even where there has been no recent volcanic action, rocks become warmer with increasing depth. In such areas water may migrate slowly to considerable depth, warming as it descends through rocks deep in the Earth. If it then reaches a large crevice that offers a path of less resistance, it may rise more quickly than it descended. Water that does not have time to cool before it emerges forms a thermal spring. Here a natural trap, about 2,800 feet underground, heats the water to a constant year-round temperature.
The amount of water that flows from springs depends on many factors, including the size of the caverns within the rocks, the water pressure in the aquifer, the size of the spring basin, and the amount of rainfall. Human activities also can influence the volume of water that discharges from a spring—ground-water withdrawals in an area can reduce the pressure in an aquifer, causing water levels in the aquifer system to drop and ultimately decreasing the flow from the spring. Most people probably think of a spring as being like a pool of water—and normally that is the case. Springs are often classified by the volume of the water they discharge. The largest springs are called "first-magnitude," defined as springs that discharge water at a rate of at least 2800 liters per second (L/s). The scale for spring flow is as follows:
Magnitude = Flow in liters per second
1st Magnitude = 2800 L/s
2nd Magnitude = 280 to 2800 L/s
3rd Magnitude = 28 to 280 L/s
4th Magnitude = 6.3 to 28 L/s
5th Magnitude = 0.63 to 6.3 L/s
6th Magnitude = 63 to 630 milliliters/second
7th Magnitude = 8 to 63 mL/s
8th Magnitude = up to 8 mL/s
0 Magnitude = no flow (sites of past/historic flow)
Parking is available near the posted coordinates. Nearby can be found an informational sign and the area where the original pools can be viewed.
Required: To get credit for this Earthcache e-mail me with answers to the following questions (be prepared to show your work):
1. Is the spring around which Warm Springs developed an ephemeral spring or a perennial spring?
2. According to available information, what is the temperature of the spring?
3. Using available information calculate the flow rate of the spring. What is that rate in liters per second (L/s)?
4. Based on the above rate of flow what magnitude is this spring?
Any log with answers, spoilers, or spoiler pictures is subject to being deleted.
Optional: Post a photo of you and your group at the posted coordinates but please avoid spoiler pictures.
Those with a thirst for additional knowledge will find a roadside pull off with interpretive signs 1/10th of a mile to the east. This is very near the original entrance to the hospital. In addition not far away is Roosevelt’s Little White House.
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