Cave Exploration Research Articles

Conferencing Cuba's Geographies of Speleology: The Politics of Inclusion and Hospitality among Cave Explorers and Scientists

From the 13th to the 17th of April of 2015, Cuban cave explorers and scientists, or speleologists, gathered to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Sociedad Espeleológica de Cuba (SEC) in the city of Camaguëy. This organization, dedicated to the exploration, study, and conservation of the country's many caves, was founded in 1940, and was the first of its kind in the Americas. While scholars have examined the achievements of Cuba's biotechnology sector, Cuban science beyond academic institutes and laboratories has been overlooked. In this paper I present ethnographic and interview data obtained during the Camaguëy conference as an entry point into Cuba's “geographies of speleology” (Cant 2006). Such geographies emphasize the complex relations between geographic knowledge, individual and institutional identities, and the state. Moreover, these geographies, much like the sense of identification with and belonging to the Sociedad Espeleológica de Cuba, are at times conflicting and contested. I develop this argument by drawing on insights in cultural geography that emphasize the importance of presence of absence. Here I invoke absence in two senses, both in terms of those absent in the Camagüey conference and those deceased but whose memory live on embodied in the collective history and knowledge of the SEC. This research illustrates the importance of stepping out of the (biotechnological) laboratory, and even the formal spaces of institutionalized scientific practice, to assess the history and potential futures of a geographically-based amateur field science in Cuba. Moreover, this work contributes to the growing focus on Latin American geographies of science and, in particular, the importance of Science and Technology Studies in/ of Cuba that examine the fuzzy boundaries of science as practice in a complex spatial network. Finally, the ongoing dynamics of foreign scholars conducting research in Cuba are considered, dynamics that are intimately tied to the very geographies this project purports to analyze.

Coping With the Subterranean Environment: A Thematic Content Analysis of the Narratives of Cave Explorers

Coping With the Subterranean Environment: A Thematic Content Analysis of the Narratives of Cave Explorers

Probabilistic Interpretation, Part II: The Case of the Speluncean Explorers

Lon Fuller’s “Case of the Speluncean Explorers,” a hypothetical murder case involving a group of cannibalistic cave explorers, is one of the most well-known thought experiments in the field of law. Legal scholars and law students continue to use Fuller’s famous case to explore a wide variety of theoretical and practical questions in law. To our knowledge, however, no one has used Fuller’s imaginary case to address questions of judicial voting or human vs. machine judges. In this paper, we imagine an alternative system of appellate voting, a cardinal voting system in which judges assign a score to their preferred judicial outcome. Appellate courts, including the make-believe court in Fuller’s hypothetical, generally use an ordinal system of voting (i.e. one judge, one vote) to decide cases. By contrast, we propose a simple cardinal voting system for deciding appellate cases, using Fuller’s famous hypothetical to illustrate how our simple system of cardinal voting would work in practice.

Scientific documentation required during the exploration of caves and technical work carried out in tourist show caves ‒ examples from central Poland

The procedure of scientifi c documentation of caves explored and/or arranged for touristic use is proposed and recommended in this paper. This procedure has been verifi ed on the basis of work done during the arrangement of the Underground Touristic Trail combining three caves in the Kadzielnia Park, city of Kielce, Świetokrzyskie (Holy Cross) Mountains, and Jaskinia Gleboka (Deep Cave) in the “Gora Zborow” nature reserve, Krakow–Czestochowa Upland. The objective of the cave documentation is the preservation of scientifi c evidence of the geological history of karst systems and the region, which are recorded in sequences of cave sediments (including their physical, petrographic and mineralogical properties, palaeontological remains and archaeological artefacts), mineralogical and isotopic composition of speleothems and specifi c features of cave morphology. These elements are often totally or partially destroyed (i.e. removed, changed in shape) during cave exploration and/or any technical work carried out in tourist caves. This makes it necessary to document thier scientifi c study, which is also required by law. The procedure of such documentation and study proposed and verifi ed in this paper include the photographic documentation of sediments and cave morphologies, sampling of sediments, as well as their basic petrographical-palaeontological analyses, which make it possible to plan exploration, technical work and further research. // Artykul proponuje procedure dokumentacji naukowej jaskin, ktore są eksplorowane oraz przygotowywane do udostepnienia turystycznego. Procedura ta zostala zweryfi kowana podczas prac udostepniających Podziemną Trase Turystyczną lączącą trzy jaskinie w parku Kadzielnia w Kielcach na terenie Gor Świetokrzyskich oraz Jaskinie Gleboką w rezerwacie przyrody „Gora Zborow” na Wyzynie Krakowsko-Czestochowskiej. Celem naukowej dokumentacji jaskin jest zachowanie świadectw geologicznego rozwoju i ewolucji systemu krasowego oraz regionu, w ktorym system ten powstal. Świadectwa te zapisane są w sekwencjach osadow namuliskowych (w postaci ich cech fi zycznych, petrografi cznych oraz mineralogicznych, a takze artefaktow paleontologicznych i archeologicznych), w mineralnym oraz izotopowym skladzie naciekow i w morfologii jaskiniowej. Te elementy są czesto calkowicie lub cześciowo niszczone (osady są usuwane, rzeźba ścian zmieniana) w czasie prac eksploracyjnych i/lub prac gorniczo-technicznych w jaskiniach udostepnianych turystycznie. To stwarza koniecznośc wykonywania dokumentacji i badan naukowych, ktore wynikają rowniez z przepisow prawnych. Proponowana procedura prac dokumentacyjno-badawczych obejmuje: dokumentacje opisową i fotografi czną sekwencji osadow oraz rzeźby jaskini, oprobowanie osadow, a takze podstawowe analizy petrografi czne i paleontologiczne, ktore umozliwiają wlaściwe planowanie oraz prowadzenie dalszych prac eksploracyjnych i gorniczo-technicznych a takze dalszych badan.

Radon as a natural tracer for underwater cave exploration

The Molnár János cave is one of the largest hypogenic caves of the Buda Thermal Karst (Budapest, Hungary) and mainly characterized by water-filled passages. The major outflow point of the waters of the cave system is the Boltív spring, which feeds the artificial Malom Lake. Previous radon measurements in the cave system and in the spring established the highest radon concentration (71 BqL−1) in the springwater. According to previous studies, the origin of radon was identified as iron-hydroxide containing biofilms, which form where there is mixing of cold and thermal waters, and these biofilms efficiently adsorb radium from the thermal water component. Since mixing of waters is responsible for the formation of the cave as well, these iron-hydroxide containing biofilms and the consequent high radon concentrations mark the active cave forming zones. Based on previous radon measurements, it is supposed that the active mixing and cave forming zone has to be close to the spring, since the highest radon concentration was measured there. Therefore radon mapping was carried out with the help of divers in order to get a spatial distribution of radon in the cave passages closest to the spring. Based on our measurements, the highest radon activity concentration (84 BqL−1) was found in the springwater. Based on the distribution of radon activity concentrations, direct connection was established between the spring and the István-room of the cave, which was verified by an artificial tracer. However, the distribution of radon in the cave passages shows lower concentrations (18–46 BqL−1) compared to the spring, therefore an additional deep inflow from hitherto unknown cave passages is assumed, from which waters with high radon content arrive to the spring. These passages are assumed to be in the active cave formation zone. This study proved that radon activity concentration distribution is a useful tool in underwater cave exploration.

Muographic data analysis method for medium-sized rock overburden inspections

Abstract. Muographic measurements of rock overburdens are of particular interest because they can be applied to natural resources and undiscovered cave explorations, and even to searching for hidden chambers in historic architectural structures. In order to derive the absolute density distribution of the overburden, we conventionally needed to know accurate information about the measurement conditions, e.g., the detector's geometrical acceptance, detection efficiency, and measurement time, in order to derive the absolute value of the transmitted muon flux. However, in many cases, it is not a simple task to accurately gauge such conditions. Open-sky muon data taken with the same detector are useful as reference data to cancel these factors; however, if the detector is not transportable, this data taking method is not feasible. In this work, we found that the transmitted muon flux will follow a simple function of the areal density along the muon path as long as the incident muon energies are below a few hundred GeV. Based on this finding, we proposed a simple analysis method that does not require detailed knowledge of the detector's conditions by combining the independently measured density information for the partial volume of the target. We anticipate that this simple method is applicable to future muographic measurements of rock overburdens.

고대동굴탐험 : 어린이를 위한 스크린 클라이밍 게임

스크린 클라이밍은 스크린 스포츠의 하나로 컴퓨터 시스템에 의해 내용이 인공암벽에 투사되며 사용자와의 상호작용에 의해 진행된다. 본 논문에서는 어린이의 발달과정과 스포츠 클라이밍에 대한 동기부여에 초점을 맞추어 고대동굴탐험을 소재로 한 스크린 클라이밍 게임을 구현하였다. 게임의 내용은 프로젝터로 인공암벽에 투사하며, 사용자와의 상호작용은 키넥트의 뎁스 정보를 이용해 사용자의 입력을 받음으로써 이루어진다. 이 게임은 어린이 대상 전시 행사에서 높은 관심을 보였으며, 앞으로 추가적인 스크린 클라이밍 게임 구현이 이루어져야 한다.

Yearnings for Guácharo Cave: affect, absence, and science in Venezuelan speleology

As a member of Venezuela’s first national society of cave exploration and science (speleology), Ramón Alberto Hernández (1926–2009) participated in the exploration and survey of Venezuela’s famous Guácharo Cave in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Despite his key contributions to the knowledge of this cave and many others in the country, his contributions have received little attention. With an ethnographic account of his last visit to Guácharo Cave in 2008 as focus, this article offers a glimpse into Venezuela’s geographies of science at an important historical moment in the relation among individuals, the nation, science, and modernity. It does so from Hernández’s vantage point, as he yearns to reach a particular point inside of the cavern, a point where his life and the lives of other cave explorers who overshadowed his speleological contributions, the cavern, and my own history become entangled. Building on scholarship that emphasizes absence and hope as important aspects of experience, I focus on this yearning, this emergent, relational, and transformative capacity that animates and constitutes not just these entangled histories and identities but also beings and the cave itself. In the process, I illustrate the ways scientific knowledge and national modernity are co-produced. Beyond Hernández, beyond caves, this exploration reminds us of the need to (1) examine the ways affective attachments are formed in/with extraordinary places and (2) widen our understanding of materiality and presence to encompass absence. Finally, this work illustrates the centrality of yearnings in fieldwork and writing.

The discovery and exploration of Hang Son Doong

Hang Son Doong is located in the Phong Nha Ke Bang Limestone Massif in Quang Binh Province, Central Vietnam. Cave exploration by British cavers has been continuous in this area since 1990. Hang Son Doong is part of the Phong Nha Cave system which runs from the southern end of the National Park near the Lao border to the final resurgence at Phong Nha Cave.

Speleological explorations on the mountains of Belava, Sljivovicki vrh and Mali Stol

The study presents the results of exploration of caves in the areas of the mountains Belava, Šljivovički Vrh, and Mali Stol (southeastern Serbia). The explorations were carried out by the cavers from the Student Speleological and Alpinistic Club (ASAK) from Belgrade, within the work done for the needs of the Geological Institute of Serbia (presently, the Geological Survey of Serbia) in the project 'Bela Palanka Sheet of the Basic Hydrogeological Map 1:100,000'. During the mentioned research, eight caves were explored in the villages of Telovac, Šljivovik (Bela Palanka municipality) and Stol (Babušnica municipality). All the caves are of relatively small dimensions (up to 100 m in length and up to 50 m of denivelation). They are situated in the vadose hydrological zone, at considerable elevations. Hydrologically, the surveyed caves are characterized by percolation waters, with no permanent or seasonal streams.

Exploring the vertical: science and sociality in the field among cavers in Venezuela

Recent scholarship on vertical geographies has lead to a critical reexamination of the relationship between space and power. In this paper, I develop a vertical geographies approach in an unexplored context and with a less tested method: that of cave explorers and scientists in the field in Venezuela, from an ethnographic perspective. Ethnographic analysis of exploration in practice, viewed in relation to a multi-dimensional environment and the social dynamics, bodies, and technologies involved in traversing it, illustrates the ways vertical geographies are constructed and experienced. For the Venezuelan Speleological Society, a group dedicated to cave exploration and science since 1967, examining these geographies highlights culturally specific ways the tension between sports and science in speleology play out and how new members are socialized in the field. Specifically, attention to verticality highlights the role that age, masculinist heroics, and other embodied dimensions play in the construction of speleological geographies. More broadly, an ethnographic focus on exploration, with humans probing the earth's sinuous contours, guards against thinking of verticality abstractly—doing so risks simplifying and even misrepresenting multi-dimensional and processual engagements among humans, their technologies, and the environment.

Assessment of Forward Osmosis as a Possible Mitigation Strategy for Urine Management During Extended Cave Exploration

Extended expeditions into caves for the purpose of survey, exploration, and scientific studies pose unique challenges to cavers, but also create the potential for environmental degradation as a result of human activities. Human waste disposal can present particular challenges during extended trips underground. Urine may cause rapid microbe proliferation and substantial odor when deposited in areas that do not receive frequent flooding, but weight and bulk make it impractical to carry many days worth of urine to the surface. In this study, we evaluated the feasibility of a forward osmosis system to concentrate nitrogen-containing and carbon-containing compounds, which would allow for cleaner treated liquid to be deposited in the cave. The concentrated waste solution, with lower weight and volume than the raw urine, could then be removed from the cave. In our analysis of volume and chemical changes of a urine solution treated over the course of a week-long trial, we determined that the system, as tested, does reduce the weight and concentrate the chemical constituents in urine, allowing some chemical separation from the treated liquid. Unfortunately, the drawbacks of this system (chemical breakthrough, added weight of the system, and unknown ecological effects associated with substantial sodium chloride additions to the cave) outweigh the benefits. We do not recommend this forward osmosis system, as tested, as an effective mitigation strategy, although other treatment strategies may hold promise.

In the footsteps of the bone collectors: nineteenth-century cave exploration on Rodrigues Island, Indian Ocean

For all of the nineteenth-century bone collectors working on Rodrigues, their main objective was to search the caves for specimens of the Solitaire Pezophaps solitaria, the sister taxon of the Dodo Raphus cucullatus of neighbouring Mauritius. Rodrigues Island has an extensive calcarenite plain in the southwest of the island, which contains numerous caves. A number of expeditions explored the area and excavated the caves, especially during the 1860s and 1870s, resulting in the discovery of thousands of subfossil bones. Some details of these activities were published, and some of the expedition explorers left manuscript reports, all of which provide clues as to where they were excavating. Here, we present the results of a modern attempt to reconstruct the movements of these expeditions and to discover which of the numerous caves were visited and excavated.

British Pioneers of the Geology of Gibraltar, Part 2: Cave Archaeology and Geological Survey of the Rock, 1863 to 1878

The 1860s marked a period of intense early interest in the antiquity of man, and so cave archaeology, in England and elsewhere. Systematic cave archaeology was initiated on Gibraltar in 1863 by a former infantry officer, Frederick Brome, the governor of the military prison, and his discoveries prompted cave exploration and local geological interest by two young British Army officers stationed on the Rock: Alexander Burton-Brown of the Royal Artillery and the subsequently more famous Charles (later Sir Charles) Warren of the Royal Engineers. On the recommendation of Sir Charles Lyell, President of the Geological Society of London, Brome's excavated material was sent to England for study by George Busk and Hugh Falconer: both palaeontologists of considerable distinction. The new discoveries drew attention to the ‘Gibraltar Skull’, presented to the Gibraltar Scientific Society by Lieutenant Edmund Flint of the Royal Artillery in 1848 but recognized only after description of Homo neanderthalensis from Germany in 1864 as a relic of that extinct species—one of the most complete Neanderthal skulls known. Detailed topographical mapping of the Gibraltar peninsula by Charles Warren and interest in Gibraltar geology generated by cave studies led to the first geological survey of the Rock—by Andrew (later Sir Andrew) Crombie Ramsay and James Geikie of the ‘British’ Geological Survey, in 1876. The first ‘overseas’ project to be undertaken by the Survey, this was historically significant because its purpose was primarily hydrogeological and it generated an atypically large-scale (1:2,500) geological map. The map and its 1877-1878 descriptive accounts, which featured Quaternary superficial sediments in more detail than the Jurassic limestone bedrock, were to guide development of Gibraltar's fortress infrastructure for the next sixty-five years.

Lines Underground: Exploring and Mapping Venezuela's Cave Environment

How do the lines on a map come into being? What stories do they tell? These questions are examined in the context of cave exploration and mapping in Venezuela. Ethnographic analysis focuses on mapping in the field, the translation of notes into final maps, and discourses surrounding these practices. The lines that cave surveyors sketch in field books while traversing underground passages reveal a dialectic between cartographic and exploratory practices. Two key factors shape this dynamic: first, the experience of probing humans “pushing passages” with no obvious end in sight, and second, the coordinated and skilled use of tools by explorers working in teams. Here, humans define both the scale and perspective of cartographic representations. But bodies slithering along passages make lines, too. This paper simultaneously considers lines of lead on paper and traces of bodies in the earth as a way to think of exploration and mapping as emergent engagements. This case powerfully illustrates the ontogenic nature of maps, highlighting the (re)production of social relations that continually brings them into being along with the environment that engenders these engagements. Finally, cave exploration and mapping illustrate the limits of our vision and technologies to grasp and order nature.

Survey and explorations of caves in southeastern Ethiopia: Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age archaeology and Holocene rock art

The horn of Africa provides the setting for the evolution of early modern humans and their dispersal out of Africa as well as for the entry, many thousands of years later, of pastoralists who brought Near Eastern and, later, South Asian livestock into Africa. However, significant gaps remain in our understanding of the late Upper Pleistocene archaeological record of the horn of Africa, mainly due to the paucity of well-stratified sites from the period. The discovery in southeastern Ethiopia of a number of caves with rich Upper Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological deposits, many of which also had rock art depicting domestic animals, offers an unprecedented opportunity for exploring the later prehistory of the region. In 2007, 2008 our survey documented twenty-one cave sites and shelters with evidence of cultural deposits, including Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Later Stone Age (LSA) stone artifacts, faunal remains, and rock art. Active and fossil speleothems, important for paleoclimatic reconstructions and chronology, were found from two other caves in eastern and western Harerghe. Test excavations were conducted at three sites, with abundant archaeological material documented from stratified deposits at two of these sites – Gilbo Tate and Goda Buticha. The latter is a subject of another paper in this volume. Rock art was recorded at eighteen sites, three of which (in western Harerghe) had not previously been documented. At many of the sites, much of the art is faded and in a vulnerable state, and continued efforts to document and conserve this art are urgently needed.

Alexander Von Mörk and Poldi Fuhrich: The Conception of Heroes in Cave Exploration in the Early Twentieth Century

The Austrians Alexander von Mörk (1887-1914) and Poldi Fuhrich (1898-1926) became two of the leading cave explorers in the early twentieth century. After qualifying as an academic painter, Alexander von Mörk fell as an officer in World War I. Poldi Fuhrich, who worked as a teacher, received international recognition during her lifetime as one of the very few female cave explorers. She died in a cave accident in Styria, Austria. Mörk and Fuhrich achieved iconic status as martyrs of cave science and became role models for speleologists. My research examines the parallels in the conception of these heroic figures and the ‘parameters’ of their memorial. How and to what end was their memory perpetuated and exploited by the following generation of explorers? Expedition diaries, protocols of caving clubs, and obituaries in newspapers are used as sources for analyses. The results show a strong correlation between the commemoration of the fallen soldiers of World War I and the conception of heroic figures in speleology. While the personality cult of Fuhrich declined in the mid-thirties due to the social exclusion of women from the scientific study of caves, Mörk was increasingly celebrated as a mythical and self-sacrificing founder and enthusiastic German nationalist. The commemoration of the deceased in cave science was related to the militarisation of club life during the twenties. This is reflected in the radicalisation of language, the usage of military equipment in cave exploration, and the nomination of military officers as club officials.

Bats and white-nose syndrome

Since March 2006, white-nose syndrome (WNS) has killed hundreds of thousands of bats in the American northeast and adjacent Canada (1). Most of the mortality has been documented in species that use underground hibernation sites (i.e., caves and mines). Little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus; Fig. 1) have been the most frequent victims. The first evidence of the lethal impact of WNS emerged during annual counts of hibernating bats conducted under the auspices of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The ascomycete Geomyces destructans, a cold-loving (i.e., psychrophilic) fungus, causes the symptoms associated with WNS. In PNAS, Warnecke et al. (2) report that G. destructans isolates from Europe and North America caused WNS in little brown bats. This raises the specter that people (bat workers or cave explorers) are responsible for the introduction of WNS into caves in the United States.

Comments on ‘Adaptive increase in sample size when interim results are promising: A practical guide with examples’

In their paper [1], Drs. Mehta and Pocock illustrate the use of a particular approach to revising the maximal sample size of a randomized clinical trial (RCT) by using an interim estimate of the treatment effect. Slightly extending the results of Gao, Ware, and Mehta [2], the authors define conditions on an adaptive rule such that one can know that the naive statistical hypothesis test that ignores the adaptation is conservative. They then use this knowledge to define an adaptive rule for a clinical trial. In our review of this paper, however, we do not find that such an adaptive rule confers any advantage by the usual criteria for clinical trial design. Rather, we find that the designs proposed in this paper are markedly inferior to alternative designs that the authors do not (but should) consider. By way of full disclosure, the first author of this commentary provided to the authors a signed referee’s report on an earlier version of this manuscript, and that report contained the substance (and most of the detail) of this review. In the comments to the editor accompanying that review, the first author described the dilemma that arose during that review. In essence, the methods described in the manuscript do not seem to us worthy of emulation. But on the other hand, the purpose of case studies in the statistical literature is to present an academic exposition of lessons that can be learned. From years of recreational spelunking, we have noted parallels between research and cave exploration. In both processes, explorers spend their time in the dark exploring the maze of potential leads, most often without a clear idea of where they will end up. Because the overwhelming majority of such leads are dead ends, the most useful companions to have along with you are the ones who will willingly explore the dead ends. However, they rapidly become the least useful companions if they have a tendency to explore the dead ends and then come back and tell you the leads went somewhere. Furthermore, the most important skill that any explorers can have is the ability to recognize when they are back at the beginning, lest they believe that the promising lead took them someplace new and become hopelessly lost. According to these criteria, then, the fact that we would not adopt some approach does not necessarily detract from the importance of a paper to the statistical literature. Instead, a paper’s value relates to the extent to which it contributes to our understanding of the methods, which can often be greatly enhanced by identifying dead ends and/or leads that take us back to the beginning. We note that there are several levels to what could be called the “recommended approach” in this paper. At the topmost level, it can be viewed merely as advocating the use of adaptive designs to assess the likelihood of future futility and efficacy of a clinical trial. But in illustrating that use, the authors seem also to advocate for adaptive methods resulting in sampling distributions that are less “heavy tailed” than analogous fixed sample designs (so that they can safely use naive analytic approaches), and they seem to fall prey to some of the difficulties in interpreting conditional power. We note that

Reply to Mavrogenis et al.

Histoplasmosis is an unusual fungal infection, most commonly occurring in cave explorers. Nonetheless it can affect immunosuppressed patients and the medical team must think of disseminated histoplasmosis when encountering multiple ulcers in the digestive tract of such patients.