18 Apr 2012
Three years after the first workshop held in Gilbraltar (2009) the 2nd International Cave Monitoring Workshop assembled a group of 26 scientists and PhD students from 14 countries in a guesthouse on the outskirts of Innsbruck.
Organised by Christoph Spötl and Marc Luetscher from the Innsbruck Quaternary Research Group and David Mattey, Royal Holloway University of London, the workshop provided a forum for a vivid exchange of experience covering all practical aspects of cave monitoring. Four main themes were discussed: strategies for monitoring of the hydrology and meteorology of cave systems, instrumentation and data logging, sampling and analysis protocols, and in-situ studies of carbonate precipitation and other cave processes.
A day trip to Spannagel Cave, an 11 km-long high-alpine marble cave hosting Europe´s highest showcave concluded this successful meeting.
The workshop was scheduled back-to-back with the EGU General Assembly in Vienna, where a session was dedicated to the scientific results obtained from modern cave monitoring programs (convened by David Mattey, Christoph Spötl and James Baldini).
The organisers acknowledge financial support from the Office of the Vice Rector for Research, the Faculty of Geo- and Atmospheric Sciences and the Research Centre Geodynamics and Geomaterials (all LFU Innsbruck), as well as Gemini Data Loggers (UK).
A workshop report was published in PAGES news, Dec 2012: Link
Photo credits: Darrel Tremaine (upper) and David Dominguez-Villar (lower).
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