Total surveyed passage in different countries

[jason]

I'm working on a research paper concerning the processes controlling underwater cave formation in rocks with high porosity (such as Florida). While my study focuses primarily on data I collected during a tropical storm at Ginnie Springs, I'm trying to make the argument that underwater caves are actually quite common and extensive and should therefore be of interest to broad geological audiences. To that end, I'm trying to get decent estimates of the amount of underwater cave passage that has been surveyed in different parts of the world. I've already got a citeable number on the Yucatan (>1000 km) - but I'm looking for similar estimates for the places like Florida, the Bahamas, the Nullarbor, etc. It would be good if I could cite a speleological survey report or something similar...

Jason

[mpoucher]

I have 198 km in my longest caves list for Florida, but that is only caves over 1 mile in length and those I have data on. I think you could easily double that for explored cave cave in Florda, so 400-500 km.

[jason]

Thanks Mike. Is that for underwater caves only or does that include dry caves as well?

[Greenwood_60]

Mammoth Cave in KY alone has over 630 km of dry passageways.

[jlillest]

Mammoth Cave in KY alone has over 630 km of dry passageways.

Yes, but how long are all the sumps and springs in Mammoth, combined?

It'd take a bit of research, but I'd be willing to bet that VA has 1-2 miles of wet passages. Cold water, difficult access, lack of motivated cave divers and remote sumps make it hard to rack up the soggy booty. If only Ron were still around....

-Jon

[FW]

Tennessee had one UW cave over a mile, and I am sure the rest add up to well over that, with tons left to be discovered. WV has one UW cave over mile as well, with lots of shorter sumps. Alabama has a couple over half a mile. Missouri has several long UW caves. Someone I know has the data for KY You can probably add nearly a mile in western KY. Texas has several systems, as well as AR. Indiana may have over a mile total too.

[jason]

Thanks for the suggestions thus far. Perhaps I should try to make what I was looking for a little bit more clear... I'm interested in aggregate underwater cave survey length of caves that are primarily underwater and formed in rocks with high porosity (such as Florida, Yucatan, Bahamas, Nullabor Plain, Barbados, etc.). If there were good numbers on individual islands in the Bahamas, I could use those too.

[Squirrel Girl]

This might help you toward your goal:

http://www.caverbob.com/wlong.htm

[Webmaster]

I seem to recall that there are some areas in Greece that might fit that description. I can't remember if it was a high porosity limestone or if it just had a lot of inclusions of varying solubility or something. And maybe some areas in the middle east, although you'd probably have a much harder time finding any data. You may remember better, but I think John Pint had said in one of his presentations that a friend of his had dove a few caves in Saudi.

The Guads would probably also fit in that category, at least the the caves used to be under water. Unless you were trying to correlate it to rainfall.

[Taucher-Tom]

so this is about Karst only, not (flooded) caves in general, right?

BTW what does "controlling underwater cave formation" mean?