The Leon Sinks Geological Area is located on the Woodville Karst Plain

Woodville Karst Plain

The Woodville Karst Plain is a karst area that runs from Tallahassee, Florida, U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico separated by the Cody Scarp.This karst plain includes numerous first magnitude springs, including Wakulla Springs, and the Leon Sinks Cave System, the longest underwater cave in the United...

 in southern and southwestern Leon County, Florida

Leon County, Florida

Leon County is a county located in the state of Florida, named after the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León. At the 2010 Census, the population was 275,487. The county seat of Leon County is Tallahassee which also serves as the state capital. The county seat is home to two of Florida's major...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It is a mature karstic area

Karst topography

Karst topography is a geologic formation shaped by the dissolution of a layer or layers of soluble bedrock, usually carbonate rock such as limestone or dolomite, but has also been documented for weathering resistant rocks like quartzite given the right conditions.Due to subterranean drainage, there...

 on the Upper Floridan Aquifer

Floridan Aquifer

The Floridan Aquifer is a portion of the principal artesian aquifer that extends into Florida and is composed of carbonate rock and located beneath the coastal regions of the Southeastern United States and is one of the world's most productive aquifers. It is under all of Florida as well as ...

. It is one of the most extensive underwater cave systems in the world and connects to Wakulla Springs

Wakulla Springs

Wakulla Springs is located south of Tallahassee, Florida and east of Crawfordville in Wakulla County, Florida at the crossroads of State Road 61 and State Road 267...

.

This hydrological system is extremely vulnerable to pollution because of the very high permeability

Permeability (fluid)

Permeability in fluid mechanics and the earth sciences is a measure of the ability of a porous material to allow fluids to pass through it.- Units :...

 of the carbonate

Carbonate

In chemistry, a carbonate is a salt of carbonic acid, characterized by the presence of the carbonate ion, . The name may also mean an ester of carbonic acid, an organic compound containing the carbonate group C2....

 aquifer. Extensive mapping and exploration of these caves has been done by the Woodville Karst Plain Project

Woodville Karst Plain Project

The Woodville Karst Plain Project or WKPP, grew out of a cave diving research and exploration group established in 1985 and incorporated in 1990 to map the underwater cave systems underlying the Woodville Karst Plain, a area...

 to understand the complex dynamics of the area and to understand the proper ecological approach to keeping this system clean.

The Leon Sinks are full of life, including the freshwater eel and rare crustacean

Crustacean

Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...

s, including the Woodville Karst Plain crayfish and the swimming Florida cave isopod Remasellus parvus

Remasellus

Remasellus parvus, the swimming Florida cave isopod, is an isopod endemic to "4 caves in the Ochlockonee and Aucilla-Suwanee drainages of Florida", United States. It is the only species in the genus Remasellus....

, that only exist in the Woodville Karst Plain

Woodville Karst Plain

The Woodville Karst Plain is a karst area that runs from Tallahassee, Florida, U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico separated by the Cody Scarp.This karst plain includes numerous first magnitude springs, including Wakulla Springs, and the Leon Sinks Cave System, the longest underwater cave in the United...

.

Wakulla-Leon Sinks cave system

On Dec 15, 2007, the connection between the Wakulla cave system and Leon Sinks cave system was made by members of the Woodville Karst Plain Project

Woodville Karst Plain Project

The Woodville Karst Plain Project or WKPP, grew out of a cave diving research and exploration group established in 1985 and incorporated in 1990 to map the underwater cave systems underlying the Woodville Karst Plain, a area...

 to create the Wakulla-Leon Sinks Cave System. This connection established the system as the longest underwater cave in the United States and the fourth largest in the world at a total of 28 miles of surveyed passages.

Sinkholes

Many of the sinkholes in the Leon Sinks Geological Area are linked through underwater caves. The area includes both wet and dry sinkholes.

Wet sinkholes

• Big Dismal – 100 foot drop to the water which drops another 100 feet underwater with a cave entrance at 80 feet down.
• Black
• Duckweed
• Fisher Creek
• Hammock
• Lost Stream
• Magnolia
• Natural Bridge

Dry sinkholes

• Back
• Big Eight
• Cone
• Far
• Field
• Gopher Hole
• Johnson
• Palmetto
• Tiny
• Turner

Park and trails

The Leon Sinks offer three hiking trails to the different sinkholes in the park including an observation platform at Big Dismal Sink. The trails feature over 20 species of trees and 75 different plants along with wildlife ranging from Carolina Chickadee

Carolina Chickadee

The Carolina Chickadee, Poecile carolinensis, is a small passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. Often, it is still placed in the genus Parus with most other tits, but mtDNA cytochrome b sequence data and morphology suggest that separating Poecile more adequately expresses these birds'...

s to Gopher Tortoises

Gopherus polyphemus

The gopher tortoise is a species of the Gopherus genus native to the southeastern United States. The gopher tortoise is seen as a keystone species because it digs burrows that provide shelter for 360 other animal species...

.

Trails:

• Sinkhole trail – 3.1 miles
• Gumswamp trail – 2.3 miles
• Crossover trail – 0.5 miles

External links

• Wakulla Karst Plains Project