GrottoCenter Blog

That's right—new features aren't taking a vacation (for now) on Grottocenter. - The number of massifs displayed on the homepage now accurately reflects the actual count. - At Bernard's suggestion, the map size on the cave entrances page now adjusts its height to match the content on the right side of the screen—it looks much better! - And you can now mark all notifications as read. Thanks to Paul and Clément for these handy new features.

A great discovery this morning: Paul and Clément have brought back the feature that lets you mark the caves you’ve visited. You can now view the caves you’ve visited—as well as those visited by other account holders—on a map within the "Activities" tab of your public page and your account. We are all cavers: it’s a wonderful way to showcase our adventures. The recent updates may have caused some errors, so please check your list of trips.

A few small changes have been made over the last 24 hours to address specific requests: Nathan felt it didn't make sense to display a license when a document wasn't linked to an actual file > the license is no longer displayed. Jean Donatien felt that the term "layers" in the context of deleting polygons (massif perimeters) wasn't quite right > this has been fixed. Paul also took the opportunity to make it clear on the network entrance page that there are descriptions available at the network level as well. He also updated the visualization of caves or entrances when linking one entrance to another or to a network. These are small details, but they help improve your user experience. Thanks, Paul.

This time, the new features are located at the bottom of the Grottocenter homepage. Paul has created a new "Best Practices" section; it hosts the page on bats as well as a new page—developed by Bernard—outlining the rules to follow to ensure environmental conservation. In the technical section, a new button has appeared, providing access to a tool for analyzing data collected in Grottocenter. It may seem simple, but a great deal of work went into it: when you are logged into Grottocenter, you are automatically connected to this data analysis platform.

Chloé has just produced and published a video showing you how to use all the features of the Grottocenter search engine. You'll learn everything in just 5 minutes—kudos on a fantastic job!

Ferdinando is responsible for publishing a very comprehensive article about the Wikicaves association and the recent developments of Grottocenter in the June issue of Underground Vision magazine. This is a way to raise awareness of the project and to keep track of its progress in 2026. https://speleomedit.tetide.org/magazine/published-numbers/june-2026-n2/

Intense work took place last night; Clément and Paul worked tirelessly, and this morning you can use the feature that allows you to import sensor data. This is a very important feature that required a tremendous amount of work. But it allows us to offer a service that is both essential for studying caves and currently unavailable as free, open-source software, freely usable online, enabling all processing, long-term data archiving, and making it available to anyone who needs it. Congratulations and thank you, Clément, for this excellent achievement!

To meet a need expressed by the prospecting team working in the Montpellier area and by the French Cave Rescue Service (Spéléo Secours Français), you can now download your search results for cave entrances in CSV, GPX, KML, and GeoJSON formats. Less visible but very important: Clément has also updated the search engine indexes so that the results provided better match your expectations. The result may look the same, but you get it much faster.

To find out, each page includes a link to the revision history page. Paul has just updated these pages to make them more readable and perfectly organized. It's now very easy to attribute each contributor's role in the collaborative work.

To address a need expressed by Bastien, who is part of the team improving cave information, Paul has released a new feature on the map. You can now enter coordinates and view the corresponding point. Here are the coordinate systems you can use and examples for testing: WGS84 decimal: 45.1179, 5.4786 Decimal with cardinal/degree symbol: 45.1179° N, 5.4786° E DMS: 45° 7' 4.6" N, 5° 28' 43" E DDM: N 45° 07.066 E 005° 28.717 Lambert 93 (EPSG:2154): 843000, 6450000 (X/Y order or inverted) Lambert III cartography (EPSG:27573): 722000, 3165000 (X/Y order or inverted)

We want to make Grottocenter easier to use in the field. With this in mind, Paul has just implemented two very practical features: Now, when you create or edit an entry, you can view the map in full screen and pinpoint your location (if GPS is enabled). Try this new feature out in the field!

Thank you, Paul, for this new feature. Now the documents are presented perfectly, well-organized, and clearly. The result is impressive for every type of document: Photos/Images Collections Journals Articles Videos Audio Files

Grottocenter easily accessible. Thanks to recent work by Paul, you can access this information on the map and filter caves according to this criterion. It's your turn: help us improve the quality of the information by sharing the data you have.

A revolution has just taken place on Grottocenter thanks to the work done by Zouhair. Grottocenter now allows you to chat with other registered users: this feature gives you the opportunity to connect with other contributors and thus get up-to-date information or information that is not publicly available about caves. You can also receive email notifications when a message is sent to you: an easily configurable tool to manage your conversations. What do you think of this new service?

The Grottocenter team is doing important work to make it possible to provide, archive, and utilize all the scientific data collected in caves and karst environments. The first building block is in place: a Superset instance will soon be accessible at https://bi.grottocenter.org, allowing you to perform the analyses you need using the data archived in Grottocenter. Thank you to Clément for this beautiful and promising achievement.

Paul has just published a new homepage with better organized and more accessible information, especially on the phone. The contact form is particularly prominent to encourage you to get in touch if you encounter any difficulties.

Paul has just released a very handy new feature: When you're on the map, right-clicking allows you to create an entry at the point you've selected. Know of a cave? Is it not in Grottocenter? It's very quick to do.

The Grottocenter website, published by the Wikicaves association, aims to provide detailed information on underground cavities to anyone who needs it. This information, provided by anyone who wishes to contribute through citizen science, helps protect this very fragile environment. Government agencies, researchers, managers of protected sites, and speleological organizations thus have access to the data they need. Your mission: Much of the data available in Grottocenter is historical data that is inaccurate and incomplete. Your mission will be to: Take charge of a geographical area Improve the quality of the data Go into the field to verify the existence and location of cavities To join the team: https://www.jeveuxaider.gouv.fr/missions-benevolat/103837/benevolat-wikicaves-2 Communication with the team will be conducted in French.

Now, when you are logged into Grottocenter, you can fully manage your account. In particular, you can request to receive email notifications: these include the validation of the documents you submit and, for leaders, information related to your subscriptions.

Each year, following the Annual General Meeting, the members of the Board of Directors elect the members of the Executive Committee. The following are elected: President: Frédéric Urien Treasurer: Dominique Ros Technical Manager: Clément Ronzon International Exchange Manager: Didier Borg

Paul has completed the necessary developments to make Grottocenter fully accessible in 15 languages. Join me in thanking him!

Paul has just released a new version of Grottocenter. Information is divided into 3 tabs, greatly simplifying use on your phone and giving you a quicker overview of available information. In the image, you can see a SCIENCES tab. It's not yet available, but it will soon allow you to share the scientific data you collect in caves and karst environments.

Paul has just released a new feature on the entries page. Now you can copy coordinates, display the point on an OSM, Google, or Grottocenter map, and also display these coordinates in the coordinate system of your choice. He has also added a feature that allows you to right-click on the map to select your coordinate system and copy the coordinates into it.

Starting April 23rd, when you create an account or log in for the first time, you will receive an email allowing you to confirm the validity of your email address. This verification will allow us to offer you, in a few weeks, a service that will allow you to communicate with other users without your email address being shared. Thanks to Zouhair for this excellent work.

How can we offer even more criteria for searching on Grottocenter while simultaneously making that search easier to access? That's what Paul has just implemented, and it's a truly impressive achievement that I encourage you to explore right away.

Paul and Clément have just launched a very important new service. It allows users to indicate, for each cave, the rules to follow to protect the environment: presence of bats, following a marked path, cave-specific rules, and wearing clean clothing. It is also possible to share information related to risks present in the cave: pollution, CO2, rockfalls, and flooding. Finally, it is possible to report tourist caves to offer access to the underground world to those unfamiliar with it. Do you know a particular area well? Would you be willing to provide this information about the caves you know and share your experience with these new features? Thank you for your help.

Is the data on Grottocenter of good quality? Excellent question, and one we're answering today. On each entry's page, you have access to an overall score and a score by category, as well as explanations of how that score was calculated. Thanks to Paul and Clément for their excellent work.

Thanks to the combined work of Clément and Paul, we now have access to a view of the massifs in Grottocenter directly from the map. Historically, the massifs in Grottocenter were areas defined by cavers to define their intervention zones. Now, it is possible to use this tool to define an area according to the criteria of your choice. Initial use focuses on protected areas. American national parks have been integrated, and Natura 2000 sites in Europe are currently being added. Paul has ensured that each massif is clearly identifiable, even where there are overlaps, and a click allows access to the chosen massif. This makes it possible to quickly determine if the massif you wish to work on already exists, and potentially modify or create it.

Paul is introducing a new feature that makes it easy to share information from Grottocenter. At the top of each page, you now have a button to copy the page address. But if you hover your mouse to the right of any section of the page, a button will appear; a button that lets you copy the address corresponding to that section. Share and build connections around Grottocenter with your friends and acquaintances!

A significant improvement has just been released regarding the mapping tools on Grottocenter. > Clément has reworked the server-side functionality to limit calls to only what is truly necessary when viewing the map. This allows for a faster response even when displaying the entire world, and it reduces the load on our database. He also took the opportunity to fix a bug related to the OSM map display. > The map search and menus have been redesigned by Paul. He has replaced the icon icons for entries with dots of varying sizes depending on the entry's importance. It is now possible to select the types of entries you wish to see.

Last night, Paul finalized work to improve the Grottocenter header. Your initials now appear when you're logged in, and your menu has been redesigned. In addition, Paul has made it possible for you to install Grottocenter as an application.

Jeorg Dreybrodt led two expeditions to Malaysia in 2025 and 2026. With the members of the "Malaysia-Swiss Caving Expedition" team, they decided to license their work under CC-BY-NC-SA, and Jeorg provided us with the files so that the data could be integrated into Grottocenter. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks to Paul for implementing a new feature that allows you to search not only place names, but also entries, networks, and organizations registered in Grottocenter, and to directly access the location of the selected item.

Paul Aubertin has just joined the Grottocenter development team and is offering a fantastic new feature starting today. From a cave's page, you can preview the images corresponding to the documents associated with that cave. You can also scroll to see all the images within a single document. It's magnificent!

Clément has just published new services associated with the massifs - Now it is possible to have a massif made up of different zones, these zones can include holes - It is possible to import a file corresponding to the perimeter of the massif - The display of entries associated with the massif uses clustering (display of hexagons in areas of high density of caves) and a limit size of the massif to avoid inappropriate use of the service This system responds to a request from the NSS but also from other organizations to have massifs which correspond to areas which benefit from particular protection.

The Wikicaves team wishes you a wonderful 2026 and invites you to participate in sharing information about the underground environment. The link below will show you how you can support us. https://www.helloasso.com/associations/wikicaves