Le Luirographe : étude de la crue du 22 Avril 1995 (réseau de la Luire, Vercors)

Abstract

The Luirographe can record automatically parameters such as the water height in a karstic network. Placed at the beginning of April 1995, at -200 m, it recorded for the first time the Luire swelling, which lasted two days. The cave of the Luire is situated in the massif of Vercors, with an hydrogeolo-gical basin of 230 km2. The Vercors is a forest of middle mountain within the French Pre-Alps of the North. The Luire swelling only exits when there are very big nival spate accentued by important rainfalls and by a southern wind. Such event arrives only every other year on average. The difference between the high and low level of karst floods can reach the impressive height of 475 m, the most important known in the world. It is the difference between altitude of saturated zone where there is the continuous spring of Arbois and the temporary emergence of the Luire, known up to -451 m and are 20 km apart.