Speleoklub Minotaurus

15-09-2017

Silická ice cave is one of the most important caves of the Slovak Karst. In many ways this is an exceptional cave. Even it is unique cave in the world. In temperate climates at an altitude of 500m is permanent glaciation occur in any other cave in the world. Silická Ice cave is therefore unique climate that deserves our attention and protection.

With global climate change is a growing pressure on the existence of permanent glaciation Silická Ice. According to the thermodynamic model, developed by a team of scientists in 1987, in the current climate conditions have permanent glaciation exist or not. Yet glaciation stabilized to some minimal extent and in the case of improved annual change, the ice will be added above this minimum. This helped some measures to protect this phenomenon : the conclusion of the transition to the non-glaciated parts, cutting down coniferous glaciated part of the floor plan and recently prievanové Rožňavská door in the hallway.

If you want a deeper understanding of the brittle nature of the phenomenon and also contribute to their protection, we need to monitor long-term climate cave. Previous studies were conducted in an expeditious measuring climatic parameters, which we consider insufficient. Therefore, we decided to monitor the climate of the cave using dataloggers from COMET. Loggers will measure the temperature only in the glaciated parts of the cave, but also on the adjacent surface and the transition to the non-glaciated cave. For project implementation is required at least 20 loggers sequentially settlements on climate monitoring locations and we will follow over the next three years. Measured data, and we will process available to anyone who would be interested in contributing to the knowledge and conservation of the cave.