Caving, also known as spelunking and potholing, is the recreational pastime of exploring wild cave systems. In contrast, speleology is the scientific study of caves and the cave environment.
Caves or caverns are natural voids under the Earth's surface. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. Exogene caves are smaller openings that extend a relatively short distance underground. Caves which extend further underground than the opening is wide are called endogene caves.
Mammoth Cave National Park is a national park of the United States in south-central Kentucky. It encompasses portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest known cave system in the world. The park's 52,830 acres (21,380 ha) are located primarily in Edmonson County, with small areas extending eastward into Hart and Barren counties. The Green River runs through the park, with a tributary called the Nolin River feeding into the Green just inside the park.
Speleology is the scientific study of caves and other karst features, as well as their composition, structure, physical properties, history, ecology, and the processes by which they form (speleogenesis) and change over time (speleomorphology). The term speleology is also sometimes applied to the recreational activity of exploring caves, but this is more properly known as caving, potholing, or spelunking. Speleology and caving are often connected, as the physical skills required for in situ study are the same.
Jewel Cave National Monument contains Jewel Cave, currently the fifth longest cave in the world and second longest cave in the United States, with 220.01 miles (354.07 km) of mapped passageways as of May 2024. It is located approximately 13 miles (21 km) west of the town of Custer in Black Hills of South Dakota. It became a national monument in 1908.
The Gunung Mulu National Park, also known simply as the Mulu National Park is a national park in Miri Division, Sarawak, Malaysia. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that encompasses caves and karst formations in a mountainous equatorial rainforest setting. The park is famous for its caves and the expeditions that have been mounted to explore them and their surrounding rainforest, most notably the Royal Geographical Society Expedition of 1977–1978, which saw over 100 scientists in the field for 15 months. This initiated a series of over 20 expeditions now named the Mulu Caves Project.
The Cave Research Foundation (CRF) is an American private, non-profit group dedicated to the exploration, research, and conservation of caves. The group arose in the early 1950s from the exploration efforts at Floyd Collins Crystal Cave, now within Mammoth Cave National Park. Its stated goals were: to promote exploration and documentation of caves and karst areas, initiate and support cave and karst research, aid in cave conservation and protection, and to assist with the interpretation of caves and karst to the public.
The Woodville Karst Plain Project or WKPP, is a project and organization that maps the underwater cave systems underlying the Woodville Karst Plain. This plain is a 450-square-mile (1,200 km2) area that runs from Tallahassee, Florida, U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico and includes numerous first magnitude springs, including Wakulla Springs, and the Leon Sinks Cave System, the longest underwater cave in the United States. The project grew out of a cave diving research and exploration group established in 1985 and incorporated in 1990.
The Marble Arch Caves are a series of natural limestone caves located near the village of Florencecourt in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. The caves are named after the nearby Marble Arch, a natural limestone arch at the upstream end of Cladagh Glen under which the Cladagh River flows. The caves are formed from three rivers draining off the northern slopes of Cuilcagh mountain, which combine underground to form the Cladagh. On the surface, the river emerges from the largest karst resurgence in Ireland, and one of the largest in the United Kingdom. At 11.5 kilometres (7.1 mi) the Marble Arch Caves form the longest known cave system in Northern Ireland, and the karst is considered to be among the finest in the British Isles.
Pettyjohn Cave is a karst cave located in Walker County, Georgia on the east side of Pigeon Mountain in the Appalachian Plateau of Northwest Georgia. It has a surveyed length of 31,490 ft and reaches a depth of 235 ft. The cave is accessible via a path from a gravel parking area on the side of Rocky Lane. Out of the 242 listed, it is 119th longest cave in the United States as declared by the Georgia Speleological Survey.
Agnes Milowka was an Australian technical diver, underwater photographer, author, maritime archaeologist and cave explorer. She gained international recognition for penetrating deeper than previous explorers into cave systems across Australia and Florida, and as a public speaker and author on the subjects of diving and maritime archaeology. She died aged 29 while diving in a confined space.
The Butler Cave Conservation Society (BCCS) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit Virginia corporation dedicated to the conservation, exploration, survey, preservation, and scientific study of the caves and karst in and around Burnsville Cove, Virginia.
Charles William (Bill) Steele, Jr. is a cave explorer and speleologist who has led and participated in expeditions to many of the longest and deepest caves in the USA, Mexico, and China. He has explored hundreds of caves across North America and Asia and has written two books chronicling his expeditions: Yochib: The River Cave, and Huautla: Thirty Years in One of the World's Deepest Caves. TV shows such as National Geographic Explorer, NOVA and How’d They Do That? have aired programs on his expeditions.
Yagodinska Cave is a cave in the Rhodope Mountains, southern Bulgaria. It is included in the 100 Tourist Sites of Bulgaria and is named after the homonymous village nearby. With a total length of 10,500 m, Yagodinska is the fourth longest cave in the country after Kolkina Dupka, Duhlata and Orlova Chuka and the longest in the Rhodopes. Yagodinska Cave is home to 11 species of bats.
Pınargözü Cave, is a cave 18 kilometres (11 mi) west of the town of Yenişarbademli in Isparta Province, Turkey. It is considered the longest cave in Turkey, although it has not yet been fully explored, and the precise extent to which it has been explored is in dispute.
The Fisher Ridge Cave System is a cave system located in Hart County, Kentucky, United States, near Mammoth Cave National Park. As of November 2019 it had been mapped to a length of 130.001 miles (209.216 km), making it the fifth-longest cave in the United States and the tenth-longest in the world.
Patricia Kambesis is an American caver, cartographer and educator.
Cave diving is underwater diving in water-filled caves. The equipment used varies depending on the circumstances, and ranges from breath hold to surface supplied, but almost all cave diving is done using scuba equipment, often in specialised configurations with redundancies such as sidemount or backmounted twinset. Recreational cave diving is generally considered to be a type of technical diving due to the lack of a free surface during large parts of the dive, and often involves planned decompression stops. A distinction is made by recreational diver training agencies between cave diving and cavern diving, where cavern diving is deemed to be diving in those parts of a cave where the exit to open water can be seen by natural light. An arbitrary distance limit to the open water surface may also be specified. Despite the risks, water-filled caves attract scuba divers, cavers, and speleologists due to their often unexplored nature, and present divers with a technical diving challenge.
