WVXU: What are those dents in the forest?

But why is the trail so bumpy like someone threw a rumpled quilt over an unmade bed?

UC College of Arts and Sciences Associate Professor Dylan Ward said Ohio's geology is to blame.

“Those formed by rainwater trickling through the limestone. Rainwater is slightly acidic, naturally,” Ward told WVXU. “That dissolves the calcium carbonate mineral in the limestone and it creates voids.”

The voids cause the ground to sag and droop in these areas over thousands of years, Ward said.

Miami Whitewater Forest is home to UC’s Center for Field Studies, a former farm that has classrooms and gives students a chance to do research on topics such as the monarch butterfly migration.

While investigating WVXU's question, Ward grew curious about the abundance of steep gullies found in the park. So he examined digital contour maps of the area’s hills and valleys created using light detecting and ranging, which bounces a laser from an airplane over the ground to map the terrain.

This part of Ohio was covered by ice sheets that dumped sediment onto the limestone and shale bedrock thousands of years ago. But that doesn't explain why the park has so many gullies, steep ravines that you sometimes see at the edges of creeks, Ward told WVXU.

Ward said he suspects the park was clearcut at some point, which exposed the bare hills to severe erosion that created the gullies found there, he said. Today, the park is covered in mature oak forest.

Listen to the WVXU story.

Featured image at top: A chipmunk peeks out of a knothole in a fallen log on the Badlands Trail at Miami Whitewater Park. Photo/Michael Miller