If you have several parts of the cave surveyed on one trip, create several distinct .svx files.
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-
- How to create a survex file - PDF - Brendan;s guide. +
- How to create a survex file - PDF - Brendan's guide.
- From muddy book to survex plot - the survex file format (to be revised)
- How to add QM data and cave descriptions - and why this is vital
- [survex software docm.] Contents of .svx files - How do I?
diff --git a/years/2007/mission.html b/years/2007/mission.html
index d7c7debd7..924f0b781 100644
--- a/years/2007/mission.html
+++ b/years/2007/mission.html
@@ -1,13 +1,14 @@
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Expo 2007: mission statement - - + + + + +Expo 2007: mission statement + + +Expo 2007: mission statement
-Expo 2007 (Cambridge Austrian Cave Science Expedition): mission statement
+Expo 2007 (Cambridge Austrian Cave Science Expedition)
Expo 2007 (Cambridge Austrian Cave Science Expedition) seeks to build on decades of expeditions by incorporating scientific research aims while maintaining a high standard of original exploration and survey. Below is a provisional outline of our major exploration and research goals. For additional descriptions, please see the grant and institution application page. The gear requirements page addresses rope lengths required and other gear that needs to be budgeted.
Note that numbers given by cave names are those of the Austrian Kataster for our area.
@@ -97,7 +98,7 @@ pitch of Keg Series. - Since novel ecology, temperature gradients and sustained exercise encountered underground also influence stress physiology (see e.g. Ronsen, et al., 2001; Rhind et al., 2004) the dataloggers provide a control background to the inter-individual variation (behavioural or physiological) of the stress response. We will explore a) caver variability in stress-hormone levels; b) what underground stressors (e.g. high humidity, darkness) are dominant and c) stress-coping mechanisms (e.g. flight or fight response). Understanding responses to the stresses of the subterranean environment is limited (e.g. Stenner et-al. 2006) and this project aims to increase awareness.
- We aim to produce a dataset of cave atmospheric data using datalogged climatic sensors placed throughout caves. An investigation of cave microclimates and specifically their interaction with condensation will employ the data to predict and quantify the geographical distribution of condensation. Implications for phenomena such as cave thermal inertia, cave breathing, speleogenesis, karst water balance, and ultimately the response of caves to climate change will be considered. Various techniques for condensation prediction and theories of microclimates will be evaluated. Climactic overlays for surveys will be produced.
Condensation and cave microclimates (undergraduate dissertation to be completed, Aaron Curtis)
+Condensation and cave microclimates (undergraduate dissertation to be completed, Aaron Curtis)
Science and Surveying:
+Science and Surveying:
Totes Gebirge, Austria 2007
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Totes Gebirge, Austria 2007
Cambridge University Caving Club's latest expedition mapped an unprecedented 7.6km while stress, microclimate, and radon studies gave a scientific focus to the expo. Aaron Curtis reports. Originally published in Speleology - - - 10, pages 10-14.
+Cambridge University Caving Club's latest expedition mapped an unprecedented 7.6km while stress, microclimate, and radon studies gave a scientific focus to the expo. Aaron Curtis reports. Originally published in Speleology 10, pages 10-14.
The appointment of a rookie leader must increase an expedition's chance of catastrophic failure. In a strange way, it seems also to improve the odds of a wildly successful summer. Far less than the appropriate level of trepidation was involved when I made some ambitious decisions regarding the game plan for Cambridge 's 2007 expedition. With no trips deeper than -200m under my belt, I couldn't have fully understood what it means to rig and derig a tight rift to -600m, while simultaneously conducting a separate push below -400m, and carrying out three scientific investigations. I had a vague idea that it wouldn't be easy; but I also had a nagging feeling that the Cambridge caving community had huge potential, unrealized in recent years. Fortunately, the latter underestimation far outweighed the former.
An All-Star Cast
The promise of some hard caving brought out the best in CUCC and ExCS (the ex-Cambridge Speleologists). Caving legends crawled out of the metalwork in their PVC and kneepads, novices were inspired. The resulting snowball effect left us with a six week expedition consisting of 31 cavers : up from last year's 12. Keenness permeated the expedition, and not just from those who were returning after decades away. The novices showed their stuff as Ollie Stevens broke the 150 hours of caving mark, Edvin Deadman and Kathryn Hopkins proved a dynamic duo, bringing back 440m of survey in a single trip with Nial Peters, and Djuke Veldhuis collected more spit than you could shake a Bunde branch at.
@@ -20,14 +18,14 @@ Totes Gebirge, Austria 2007
The stress study was part of the new expedition emphasis on science. More than a year before expo, I began to think about conducting the research for my undergraduate geography dissertation on the expedition. The idea of becoming the lone researcher in a den of cavers made me nervous. Then one evening at the pub, Djuke started talking about milking cavers for spit. Whether or not it was drunken babble, she stood by it. I began speaking with scientists who were expo alumni and realized that expo had tremendous unrealized potential for science : excellent infrastructure, undisturbed environments, and intelligent minds. Despite talk of how tradition runs deep and major changes were likely to meet resistance, I encountered only support for my attempt to re-invent the expedition. In hindsight, someone could have pointed out that "The Cambridge Austrian Cave Science Expedition Two Thousand and Seven" doesn't exactly roll off of the tongue.
+The stress study was part of the new expedition emphasis on science. More than a year before expo, I began to think about conducting the research for my undergraduate geography dissertation on the expedition. The idea of becoming the lone researcher in a den of cavers made me nervous. Then one evening at the pub, Djuke started talking about milking cavers for spit. Whether or not it was drunken babble, she stood by it. I began speaking with scientists who were expo alumni and realized that expo had tremendous unrealized potential for science : excellent infrastructure, undisturbed environments, and intelligent minds. Despite talk of how tradition runs deep and major changes were likely to meet resistance, I encountered only support for my attempt to re-invent the expedition. In hindsight, someone could have pointed out that "The Cambridge Austrian Cave Science Expedition Two Thousand and Seven" doesn't exactly roll off of the tongue.
Studying the Microclimate
@@ -35,12 +33,12 @@ Djuke's achievement could probably use further clarification. Spit samples were
+
It seemed I would have some very expensive toys indeed. Nial unfurled the 2005 survey with such dramatic gusto at our Royal Geographical Society interview in London that they offered us £2000 towards the project for thermistors, dataloggers, and a new set of top camp solar panels. Club members would also put long hours into the construction of two devices designed by Dr Neville Michie, an Australian cave climatologist who was instrumental in assisting our plans. Additionally, the geography department offered to lend a weather station and a thermal camera worth £30,000 for observing cave wall thermal gradients.
In the field, those toys provided very little opportunity for playing:it was exhausting work transporting, setting up, troubleshooting, and collecting data. Some of the technology disappointed us. The thermal camera was unavailable because it malfunctioned while in use on a volcano in Ethiopia shortly before we left. The sonic anemometer which I had put months of work into building proved too finicky for underground use. Olly Madge's micropsychrometer never made it underground : I broke the fragile thermopile assembly at top camp while trying to attach a wet wick. A week of weather station data was lost during a battery change.
@@ -49,7 +47,7 @@ Polysyllaby aside, the expedition under that name was approved and supported by Julian Todd in The Silk Road beyond the Razordance sump. Photo: Andrew Atkinson.
+
While we'd like to say it was teamwork and cooperation that led to successes in two deep leads simultaneously, it seems that 'friendly' competition worked just as well. Un-British rope grabbing and name calling began when it became clear that the budgeted 2.5km of rope would be used to the very last metre. Nial Peters mustered a group of cavers who felt that Razordance ('Pussyprance') was for wimps, and the real action was in the stratigraphically deepest, maze-like levels of Steinbrücken, accessed via the 80m Gaffer Tape pitch and following series.
@@ -112,7 +110,7 @@ EisehContinuing south, far past Stienbruckenhöhle, Olly Betts and Jenny Black continued their work from their plateau camp. Warm invitations had been extended to the Steinbrückenhöhle crew, but we were all wrapped up in our own projects. Olly and Jenny miraculously turned four of our caves, 81, 82, 85, and 148, into one and a half by finding connections between 82 and 85, and 81 and 148. 81 and 85 could be seen as connected because they discovered a new 81 entrance in the same doline as the 85 entrance.
Eislufthöhle (76), yielded a new pitch series, the Sea of Holes , as did Marilyn Munroe Höhle (148), called Deep Space. The latter cave had admitted no human beings since 1987, and upon entering, Olly and Jenny made an intriguing discovery. There was a page of survey notes on the floor of a passage, still legible after 20 years. Safely removing them from the cave appeared impossible, but photos were taken. We have so far failed to figure out what part of the real world the survey corresponds to. The legs are very long, suggesting a surface survey. Personally, I suspect they lead to buried treasure.