Water Connects Us All: A Film About Mammoth Cave's Biosphere Region

Partway through filming Mammoth Cave Biosphere Region: Water connects us all, the drone camera was caught in a downpour over the Western Kentucky University Green River Preserve. It was an anxious moment. Filmmaker Lia Nydes, helped by Marissa Schorr, a Biosphere Scientist-in-the-Park intern, flew the drone safely back to the ground — and it brought back unusual footage of raindrops falling over the Green River.

The premiere

The film debuted on March 18, 2021, at the DC Environmental Film Festival. Held in the nation's capital every year since 1993, the festival calls itself the world's premier showcase of environmental films, and it is one of Washington's leading annual cultural events. A jury selected the film to stream during that year's virtual festival.

What the film is about

Mammoth Cave — 412 miles of it when the film was made — is the longest known linear cave system in the world, and it was carved by water flowing underground. Water seeping through the porous karst rock of South Central Kentucky is also the key to the environmental and economic well-being of the surrounding Biosphere Region. The film tells the story of the people and organizations working to protect that groundwater, in the voices of people who live there:

• a farmer;
• a Mammoth Cave National Park ranger;
• a kayaker;
• the manager of Hidden River Cave;
• a karst hydrologist.

Some are members of the Mammoth Cave Biosphere Region Advisory Council.

Who made it

Cliff McCreedy, the National Park Service's coordinator for the U.S. Biosphere Network, and Lia Nydes, a graduate student fellow at American University's Center for Environmental Filmmaking, made the film together. The Park Service and the center produce films under a cooperative agreement through the Chesapeake Watershed Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit.

• More biosphere films. With fellow graduate student Nick Tucker, Nydes and the Champlain Adirondack Biosphere Network also produced a film about that Biosphere Region in New York and Vermont, and more are planned about the lands, waters and people of Biosphere Regions.
• A history series. The partners are also continuing a separate series on the history of science in the national parks.

The programs give young filmmakers and scholars — especially women and members of minority groups — a chance to build their careers.

Watch Mammoth Cave Biosphere Region: Water connects us all on the National Park Service website.

Sources

Based on "Mammoth Cave Film Premieres at DC Festival," National Park Service, a work of the United States government in the public domain.