Some photos from another amazing cave in Spain: Cuevas del Aguila, just west of Madrid.
This one looks quite unique as the harder iron-rich rock in the cave is of a much darker, redder color than the bright white speleothems made of calcium carbonate. Well worth the 11 euro tour!
Here is our video about it-
videos.trom.tf/w/xdjRvcM28Mxim…
#Cave #caves #cavescience #travel #spain #RV #motorhome #geology #europe
Around 25 years ago, three researchers independently investigated how to automatically count water dripping from a cave roof onto a stalagmite. Dominique Gentry worked in Belgium, I worked in the UK, and Janece McDonald in Australia. There were proximity sensors, infrared beam splitters, pressure transducer, ....
Janece's experimental set up was left in Wollondilly Cave where it has been part of the cave tour for over two decades. Here it is, with one site restarted with Stalagmate (c) drip counter (there's a pressure transducer inside the box, recording when it senses the drip impact). Let's see how the hydrology has changed over 20 years later.
#research #hydrology #cavescience #groundwater #academia #Wombeyan #UNSW #caves
New Paper! 
About a new cave silverfish - not just a new species but a new genus - that we discovered here in Alabama: Spinanycta alabamensis
https://subtbiol.pensoft.net/article/119986/
#cave #caves #biology #nature #science #queer #queerscientist #cavescience #karst #karststudies #silverfish #invertibrates
A new genus and species of troglobiotic nicoletiid (Insecta, Zygentoma, Nicoletiidae) is described from northern Alabama, USA. The type species was collected from three caves in the Highland Rim section of the Interior Low Plateau physiographic province on the northern side of the Tennessee River Valley. Morphological and genetic analysis using the mitochondrial 16S rRNA locus show that Spinanycta alabamensis sp. nov. is quite distinct from related nicoletiids in North America. The species differs from members of other genera by its urosternum I, which in males is modified with a central pointy extension. The new species significantly extends the distribution of cave-dwelling members of the family into the southeastern United States and suggests that additional nicoletiid diversity remains to be discovered from karst regions of the eastern United States.
Here's one of the slides from my presentation yesterday at #AGU23, featuring the research of Rebecca Chapman.
She used functional PCA, a statistical method very suited to time series data to extract common trends and patterns in data. It is particularly robust to data gaps, which we have many of in our cave hydrology data
If functional PCA sounds like a technique you can use, Rebecca's research is available as a pre-print and the code is online on GitHub. Links are in the image below.
#hydrology #PCA #timeseriesanalysis #cavescience #caves #science
Another week of fieldwork has been successfully completed, thanks to the support of the team at Yarrangobilly Caves.
Travelling with @gregoiremariethoz, we discussed future groundwater and hydrology collaborations at this long-term cave-based environmental monitoring site.
If you are interested in our research, this is an example of our previous collaboration at the caves, where we worked out how much rainfall was needed for groundwater recharge to occur.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169421000123
#science #environment #hydrology #groundwater #cavescience #caves #climate
Undescribed *genus* of bristletail...maybe this will be the year it gets described. Remember kids, it takes on average over 20 years to describe a new species. I was on the trip it was discovered (I was busy looking at the diplurians nearby when a friend found a not-diplurian!); and I found the second population of them as well (and there is now a third population discovered). So I'm kindaaaa emotionally invested in them getting described and out there. 
#tails #bristletail #silverfish #entomology #cave #karst #cavescience #booty
The British Cave Research Association are celebrating its 50th anniversary with a series of free monthly webinars. I was delighted to be asked to give the September webinar earlier this week on 'caves as observatories of groundwater recharge'
You can find the list of future seminars through to January here:
https://bcra.org.uk/seminars2023.html
#science #caves #cavescience #research #envionment #scicomms #BCRA
Orconectes australis (cave crayfish) with a hellgrammite (larval dobsonfly) meal!
#crayfish #entomology #biology #cavescience #caves #speleology #speleobiology
Sasha
Andy Baker
Sunguramy 
