Recent Graduates
Lee Florea surveying the depths of Jugornot Cave, a 10-km long cave system in southern
Kentucky that he mapped from 2001 through 2005. Lee’s research in this cave revealed
a Cambrian-age normal fault at depth (photo by Kevin Toepke).
Lee Florea
Lee is an Assistant Professor at Western Kentucky University, in Bowling Green, KY,
and a Director of the National Speleological Society.
His present research focuses on two themes: geochemistry, microbiology, and isotopic
fractionation of groundwater in the karstified limestone hammocks of Everglades
National Park; NMRI imaging of groundwater flow through 3-D renderings of flow units
in the Pleistocene Biscayne aquifer of southeast Florida. Lee’s dissertation, The Karst of West-Central Florida (Fall, 2006),
is published in four peer-reviewed papers in Ground Water (2), Quaternary Science
Reviews, and the Journal of Caves and Karst. Lee has other active research projects
in the caves and karst of Kentucky and Romania.