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Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Geology

Caves And Karsts Of Northeast Africa, William R. Halliday Jan 2003

Caves And Karsts Of Northeast Africa, William R. Halliday

International Journal of Speleology

At least potentially karstifiable rocks cover much of the surface of Egypt and northern Libya. Study of caves and other karstic features of this region has been hampered by lack of roads, rapid disintegration of the surface of friable, poorly consolidated limestone, wind-blown sand and other factors. Interbedding with marly aquicludes hampers speleogenesis locally. Calcareous and evaporite karsts are present, however, and their waters are important albeit generally limited resources. Large quantities of fresh water are lost through submarine springs downslope from Libya’s Gebel al Akhdar range; the caves and karst of that range may be among the world’s greatest. …


Tree-Mould Caves In Slovakia, Ludovít Gaál Jan 2003

Tree-Mould Caves In Slovakia, Ludovít Gaál

International Journal of Speleology

Four tube-shaped caves are described in this work, which origined in consequence of weathering the trees. Their length ranges from 5.8 to 17 m. All of them occur in neovolcanic rocks of Middle Slovakia, in epiclastic andesite conglomerates, breccias or in the tuffs. Some other caverns are close to the entrance of this caves, however they are inaccessible for a man. Thin rim of silicates (opal or chalcedony) occurs in some of them.


Minerogenesis Of Volcanic Caves Of Kenya, Paolo Forti, Ermanno Galli, Antonio Rossi Jan 2003

Minerogenesis Of Volcanic Caves Of Kenya, Paolo Forti, Ermanno Galli, Antonio Rossi

International Journal of Speleology

Kenya is one of the few countries in which karst cavities are scarce with respect to volcanic ones, which are widespread throughout the whole country. The great variability in lava composition allowed the evolution of very different cavities, some of which are amongst the largest lava tubes of the world. As normal for such a kind of cave, the hosted speleothems and cave minerals are scarce but important from the minerogenetic point of view. Anyway up to present no specific mineralogical research have been carried out therein. During the 8th International Symposium on Volcanospeleology, held in Nairobi in February 1998, …


Martel's Routes In Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, 1912, Trevor R. Shaw Jan 2003

Martel's Routes In Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, 1912, Trevor R. Shaw

International Journal of Speleology

Martel’s own copy of the Hovey 1912 guidebook to Mammoth Cave has his routes marked faintly in pencil on the printed cave plans. These plans are reproduced here, with his routes indicated on them. He generally followed the four standard tourist routes which now included Kaemper’s 1908 discoveries to Violet City, but instead of visiting the Maelstrom he went to Hovey’s Cathedral and Gerta’s Grotto.


Human Impact On Karst: The Example Of Lusaka (Zambia), Jo De Waele, Roberto Follesa Jan 2003

Human Impact On Karst: The Example Of Lusaka (Zambia), Jo De Waele, Roberto Follesa

International Journal of Speleology

Lusaka, the capital of Zambia with over 2,000,000 inhabitants, is built on an extensive plateau composed mainly of schists and dolomitic marbles, constituting a very important aquifer that provides the city with almost half of its drinking water needs. Recent demographic growth, leading to uncontrolled urban expansion, and mismanagement of the water resource and of urban waste has lead, in the past 20 years, to an overexploitation of the aquifer and to a generalised water quality depletion, putting in serious danger the future social and economical development of the capital. This third world city has, for these reasons, become a …


Littoral Dripstone And Flowstone--Non-Spelean Carbonate Secondary Deposits, Danko Taborosi, Kevin Stafford Jan 2003

Littoral Dripstone And Flowstone--Non-Spelean Carbonate Secondary Deposits, Danko Taborosi, Kevin Stafford

International Journal of Speleology

Speleothem-like dripstone and flowstone deposits can form in the non-spelean environments of marine notches on tropical carbonate coastlines. Hereby termed “littoral dripstone” and “littoral flowstone” to distinguish them from genuine cave deposits, they reflect the basic speleothem types: draperies, stalactites, stalagmites, and columns. Nevertheless, these formations lack the luster and crystallinity of cave analogues, and are not nearly as well-developed, dense, and massive. They are composed of layered microcrystalline aragonite and calcite, are generally highly porous, and invariably overlie dissolutional and bioerosional karren. Because true speleothems, often found in the remnants of solution voids breached by coastal erosion, are also …


Contribution To The Speleology Of Sterkfontein Cave, Gauteng Province, South Africa, J. E. J. Martini, P. E. Wipplinger, H. F. G. Moen, A. Keyser Jan 2003

Contribution To The Speleology Of Sterkfontein Cave, Gauteng Province, South Africa, J. E. J. Martini, P. E. Wipplinger, H. F. G. Moen, A. Keyser

International Journal of Speleology

The authors present more data about the speleological aspect of the Sterkfontein Cave, famous for its bone breccia which yielded abundant hominid remains. They also briefly review the previous voluminous studies by numerous authors, which are mainly dealing with the paleontology, stratigraphy and sedimentology of the breccia. The present investigations were oriented to hitherto poorly investigated aspects such as detail mapping of the cave, its country rock stratigraphy and recording the underground extension of the basal part of the breccia body. The cave consists of a complex network of phreatic channels, developed along joints in Neoarchaean cherty dolostone over a …