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Speleology
Speleology is the scientific study and exploration of caves; including the surveying, mapping and cartography of caves and reporting on the flora and fauna found in them. The Speleology topic includes questions related to the geology, biology, chemistry, archaeology, hydrogeology,and karst topography of caves; the history of and trivia about specific caves; and published findings related to the research of those who study caves called Speleologists.
1,219 Questions
What does groundwater naturally contain that allows it to dissolve limestone and caverns?
Carbonic Acid
What skills do scientists use to test how water behaves?
Scientists use a variety of skills to test how water behaves, including experimental design, data collection and analysis, critical thinking, and observation. They may use techniques such as measuring surface tension, viscosity, pH levels, conductivity, and temperature to study water behavior in different conditions. Additionally, scientists also utilize technologies like microscopes and spectrometers to explore water properties at a molecular level.
How do you make an artificial lightning?
Creating artificial lightning typically involves generating a high-voltage electrical discharge in a controlled environment. This can be achieved through devices like Tesla coils or other high-voltage generators that can produce electrical arcs resembling lightning. Additionally, using specialized equipment and safety measures is crucial to prevent potential hazards associated with high-voltage discharges.
How many caves are in an average mountain?
The number of caves in a mountain can vary significantly. It depends on factors such as the size of the mountain, the type of rock it's composed of, and the geological history of the region. Some mountains may have thousands of caves, while others may have very few or none at all.
How do acids in ground water make caves form?
Acids in groundwater, such as carbonic acid from carbon dioxide, can dissolve limestone (calcium carbonate) rocks, creating openings and cavities underground. Over time, the continuous dissolution of the limestone by acidic water leads to the formation of caves through a process called chemical weathering.
What type of minerals or rocks are found in luray caverns?
Luray Caverns in Virginia primarily features formations of limestone, including stalactites, stalagmites, and flowstone. Some other minerals present in the caverns include calcite, aragonite, and gypsum.
What is the atmosphere on outer planets?
Jupiter's atmosphere is mainly Hydrogen (around 90%), Helium (around 10%), with small amounts of Methane, Ethane, Water and Ammonia.
Saturn's atmosphere is mainly Hydrogen (around 96%), Helium (around 3%), with small amounts of Methane, Ethane and Ammonia.
Uranus' atmosphere is mainly Hydrogen (around 83%), Helium (around 15%) and Methane (around 2.3%).
Neptune's atmosphere is mainly Hydrogen (around 80%), Helium (around 19%) and Methane (around 1%).
What is the voltage induced in a solar flare?
The voltage induced in a solar flare can vary greatly, but it can reach levels of billions of volts. The intense magnetic activity and radiation from the flare can produce powerful electric currents and induce significant voltages in objects such as power lines and communication systems on Earth.
What is the particle shape of gravel?
The particle shape of gravel is typically angular, irregular, and rough. Gravel particles have sharp edges and varying sizes, which allows for good interlocking and stability when used in construction or landscaping applications.
Why is water necessary to make caves?
Water is necessary to make caves because it plays a key role in the process of cave formation, known as speleogenesis. Water dissolves minerals in the rock, creating cavities over time. Additionally, flowing water can erode and shape the cave walls, ceilings, and floors, contributing to the cave's formation and development.
Is subarctic colder than humid continental?
Yes, the subarctic climate is generally colder than the humid continental climate. Subarctic climates have shorter, cooler summers and longer, colder winters with temperatures consistently below freezing, while humid continental climates have more moderate temperatures with distinct summer and winter seasons.
Why does the revolution of earth is elliptical?
The elliptical shape of Earth's orbit around the sun is due to the gravitational influence of other planets and celestial bodies in the solar system. The shape of the orbit is not static but varies slightly over time due to these gravitational interactions.
What is a computer a nonrenewable resource?
A computer is not a nonrenewable resource. It can be manufactured using materials that are mined and processed, which can be considered nonrenewable resources, such as metals and plastics. However, the components of a computer can be recycled or repurposed, reducing the need for new resources.
What is the area immediately below the water table?
The area immediately below the water table is called the zone of saturation. This zone is where spaces between soil and rock particles are filled with water. Groundwater is found in this zone and can be extracted through wells.
How are Erosional caves formed?
Erosional caves are formed when water dissolves and carves through soluble rock formations like limestone, creating passageways and chambers underground. Over time, the continuous flow of water erodes the rock and forms distinctive cave structures. As the water table changes and the rock continues to weather, erosional caves can further evolve and change shape.
What are cone-shaped dripstone deposits that are found on the floor of caves?
Those are stalagmites. It has a 'g' in it, so think of 'Ground' to help you remember.
The deposits hanging from the roof of the cave are stalactites. It has a 'c' in it, so think of 'Ceiling'. They also Stick Tight to the ceiling.
What main process forms sea caves in softer rock?
Sea caves are formed through coastal erosion. The main process is the Hydraulic Action of the waves acting on the rock, resulting in erosion. Specifically, the waves act not only through their own sheer force, but also by forcing tiny air bubbles into the cracks, forcing them to expand that way too. Overall, therefore, it is very successful. The softer rock erodes quicker than the harder rock, causing it to recede quicker.
What kind of weathering created most limestone caves?
Most limestone caves are created through a process called chemical weathering, specifically carbonation. This occurs when rainwater combined with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere creates a weak acid that dissolves the calcium carbonate in the limestone bedrock, gradually forming caves over time.
How does groundwater cause caves to form?
groundwater can erod rocks,causing caves to form
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In greater deatil:
How Caves Form in Limestone
That is such a common question on ‘Answers’ I wrote this single reply! The technical terms are introduced by capital initials.
Most of the world’s caves are in Limestone.
Caves need three materials: a soluble rock like Limestone or Gypsum, water and Carbon-dioxide (CO2).
Their host limestone also needs to be of appropriate physical structure and raised into hills, then subjected to reasonably consistent precipitation for many tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
Limestone is a sedimentary rock of which the world’s greater proportion was laid down in warm, relatively shallow, seas. The rock was laid in horizontal layers – Beds – separated by Bedding-planes which generally reflect geologically-brief changes in the environment. The suite of beds is known as a Formation, generally named after its “type area”.
Later continental uplift (tectonic processes) raise the formation along with its underlying rocks, usually tilting and folding it to at least some extent in the process. Since most rocks are brittle they cannot take much stress, and limestone beds crack into grids of fine fractures called Joints. The uplift and folding often also causes Faulting – major breaks with the rock mass one side of the Fault Plane being raised, lowered or moved horizontally past that on the opposite side. (Note: Plane – the “Fault Line” sometimes misused as a political metaphor is that of the fault-plane cutting the land surface.)
Now we have the hills, next we need rain-water that has absorbed atmospheric CO2 to create Carbonic Acid (weak, natural soda water in fact!). It may be augmented by acids from the soil, too. This solvent permeates through all those joints, bedding-planes and faults; flowing very, very slowly under considerable pressure applied by its depth, from its sinks on the surface to its springs at the base of the formation. In doing so, it dissolves the limestone (chemical weathering), creating meshes of tiny micro-conduits that over many tens of thousands of years coalesce and capture each other to form cave passages.
Once this happens, the rate of erosion can increase – though still to perhaps only a few millimetres per thousand years under generally temperate climates.
A cave, or a series within a cave system, that still carries its formative stream is called “Active”, and is still being developed.
Surface changes such as the valley floor being lowered by erosion, or down-cutting within the cave by its stream, changes the water’s route and the original, now dried-out, stream-way is called “Fossil” or “Abandoned”. Such passages may be filled with silt left by floods as the main flow gradually abandons them; or may become richly decorated with Speleothems – calcite deposits such as stalactites and stalagmites precipitated from ground-water still oozing through the joints in the limestone above the cave. In time such passages may start to break down as there is no stream to dissolve away slabs falling from the roof as permeating ground-water attacks the rock above.
In the end, surface lowering of the landscape as a whole, breaches and destroys the cave. Nothing is permanent in Nature!
Caves in limestone are also parts of Karst Landscape. i.e. a landscape developed by the dissolution of limestone, giving surface features like Dolines, Limestone Pavement, and in the tropics, distinctive hills such as those represented in Chinese Willow-pattern images. ‘Karst’ is from the Slavic word ‘Kras’, the name for its world type-area.
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The above is purely an introduction to a vastly more complex and subtle series of processes, of course, and you need to refer to appropriate text-books on geology and cave studies to learn them.
The scientific study of caves is Speleology – embracing geology, hydrology, biology, archaeology and other disciplines.
Simply visiting caves to enjoy them for their scenery and the physical and mental challenges they present, is called Caving, though you can’t study a cave unless you can negotiate its obstacles. The enthusiasts are simply Cavers throughout the English-speaking world – you see “spelunkers” sometimes on ‘Answers’ but it's an old slang word not found in caving literature.
How have caves shaped the earth in the past?
Caves have shaped the Earth through various geological processes such as erosion, dissolution of rock by water or acid, and tectonic activity creating fractures or faults. Over time, caves can form intricate underground networks that impact how water flows through the landscape and can contribute to the formation of unique landscapes above ground. Caves also provide valuable habitats for a variety of flora and fauna.
In human terms, yes, although it may be noticeable in a matter of a few years in some situations.
Obviously it depends on the rock and environment but geologically, weathering and erosion may be very slow or quite rapid.
How do underground cause caves to form?
Do you mean "How do caves form"?
For a start the adjective is superfluous. Caves ARE underground by definition!
The vast majority of the world's caves are in limestone upland where the depth of the individual beds and the tension-joint structures within the rock, together with surface topography and drainage (of rain and snow-melt), combine to permit initial movement of water from sink to rising (spring) though the joints and bedding-planes, faults and other discontinuities.
Limestone is soluble in ground-water, thanks to slight acidification from rain absorbing atmospheric carbon-dioxide as it falls, and over time the initial conduits enlarge, start to capture each other and eventually create stream-courses - cave passages.
Othe rocks can hold caves:
Lava tubes under basalt lava flood develop when still-molten lava flows from under the cooled and solidified crust.
Sandstone in deserts can hold rock-shelters scoured out by wind-blown sand.
Sea-caves: simply erosion features in cliffs subject to wave action and sub-aeriel weathering.
Talus "caves": somewhat stretching the point, these are cavities between fallen boulders and their source mountain-side of sea-cliff.
Mass-movement caves (aka gulls / gull-caves, slip-rifts): fissures created behind valley walls and sea-cliffs by the outer "skin" of rock translated by mass-movement creep.
What is the surface between the zone of aeration and the zone of saturation called?
The Water Table.
The term Piezometric, or sometimes Potentiometric, Surface occurs in literature on hydrology but describes an artificial level in a well or borehole, used for measuring the aquifer.
Which is the weather instrument would a meteorologist use to measure the amount of rainfall?
A rain gauge is the weather instrument used to measure the amount of rainfall. Rain gauges collect and measure the volume of precipitation that falls at a specific location over a certain period of time.
What is the rate of water freezing?
Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) under normal atmospheric pressure. The rate at which water freezes depends on factors such as temperature, agitation, and impurities in the water.
