GrottoCenter Blog

In the field of natural and human sciences, the MNHN contributes to the production, development and sharing of knowledge on the geological and biological diversity of the Earth, on the diversity of cultures and societies and on the history of the planet. To this end, its mission is to develop in synergy fundamental and applied research, expertise, valorization, enrichment, conservation and provision of collections and data, training including teaching, educational action and the dissemination of scientific and technical culture for all audiences. The MNHN Center for Ecology and Conservation Sciences (UMR 7204 CESCO) coordinates the "Bat Migration Routes in Europe" Project, the aim of which is to study the migration routes of bats in Europe. For this, acoustic recordings are collected across Europe, in order to highlight the hot spots of activity of several species of migratory bats according to environmental variables As part of this project, an agreement has been establishe...

A few months ago Sylvestre Clément gave his agreement for the work he did on the site https://coume-ouarnede.fr to be archived on Grottocenter. This is now done and you can now enjoy, in a different way, the exceptional work he did on the Arbas massif and in particular on the Henne Morte / Félix Trombe network You can discover it here https://grottocenter.org/ui/caves/75342

    The elements of the “BD Cavités”, a database created by the BRGM, have just been integrated into Grottocenter. Several thousand entries enrich the database “created by cavers for cavers”. Grottocenter has already exceeded 102,000 entrances and cavities.   For various historical reasons, the coordinates of these entries, proposed by the BRGM, are not always very precise. Everyone, in their area of interest, will be able to improve these locations and also complete the encyclopedic sections, as well as the associated documents. Everyone's work will benefit everyone.

  As part of the partnership that we signed with the "CDS du Gard", Laurent Blum made data collected by Jean-Louis Galera available to Grottocenter.   A little over 1000 caves, located in Gard and in neighboring departments, have just been added to Grottocenter. Thank you for sharing.   If you also have data that you wish to share, if you are interested in a partnership with the Wikicaves association, contact us  

  At the initiative of Ferdinando Didonna, the National Museums of Kenya and the Wikicaves association signed an agreement which has the primary objective of establishing an inventory of Kenya's caves using Grottocenter   We are very happy with this partnership and are calling on you to help us collect data regarding caves in Kenya  

  Primero empecé en la zona centro (Cuenca, Guadalajara, Rio Lobos, etc), con el grupo Standard de Madrid y, después de un traslado por motivos laborales a León, en la zona Cantábrica, fundamentalmente, con el G.E. Matallana de León y algún grupo de Montaña, aunque implicándome muy poco en el funcionamiento de estos grupos y federaciones. Mi interés por el mundo subterráneo ha pasado del correteo por cualquier cueva que cayera a mi alcance hasta el estudio de geomorfología de las mismas, hidrogeología, acuíferos, etc Es más, estoy convencido de que los espeleólogos como colectivo podemos generar un gran caudal de información para el estudio de este mundo subterráneo, pero, en el momento actual, este conocimiento se está aprovechando de un modo muy escaso: Publicaciones escasas, memorias de campaña enviadas a las Federaciones Territoriales y a las entidades de protección de la naturaleza del Estado que parecen caer en pozos sin fondo donde no se sabe nada más de ellas,...

  A year ago, thanks to funding from the UIS and FSE, but also thanks to the work of volunteer developers, it was possible to use Grottocenter to capture complete information about caves.   Today contributors are working on the inventory of Vercors, Tarn, Hérault, Aude, Meurthe et Moselle, Cantabria. Thank you all  

  The Gard CDS and the Wikicaves association have just signed an agreement to define how these two organizations will collaborate in terms of data on caves.   CDS du Gard is authorized to present data from Grottocenter in the VMap Speleo application and has direct access to this data. In return Vmap Caving data for which the authors have given the right to share their work will be gradually integrated into Grottocenter.   In addition, VMap Caving data will be archived on the Grottocenter infrastructure in order to secure them, without this data being able to be used.  

  The animators of the IKARE project have made part of their data available for integration into Grottocenter.   They are now available.   Thank you for sharing    

  The IKARE project is a speleological-karstological inventory of North-East France.     This is a partnership between the Rhine-Meuse Water Agency, the Grand Est Speleology League (LIGES), the GEREE design office and the LOTTERR laboratory of the University of Lorraine, which has made it possible to build a very comprehensive database.   The data contained in this database have been partly made available to the Wikicaves association so that they can be integrated into Grottocenter. This work will be carried out gradually, it relates to nearly 1400 karstic phenomena.  

The UIS has just sent a letter to all the federations and to the delegates of each country to invite them to contact the Wikicaves association to set up a partnership so that we define together the data available to the federations which can be directly integrated into Grottocenter and those for which special protective measures must be taken  

Visitors can search and access information on the caves available on Grottocenter.   Some caves are  under specific provisions imposed by a legal authority, which may restrict access to some types of  information and possibly also to the cave itself. All users can carry out all operations on the range of information available on Grottocenter, except that data subjected to the specific provisions as mentioned above in article 1 The administrators of Grottocenter (the board of Directors of the Wikicaves association) can sign agreements with partner organizations. The partner organizations will be sent information on modifications carried out on the caves according to a predefined criterion (area, club, etc.). These agreements  may include specific measures aiming to restrict access to some information. These restrictions will need to be specifically motivated. Contributors can display a ‘ Restrictions ’ window  regarding  access to a c...

Bouches-du-Rhône is a department in the south of France named after the mouth of the Rhône River . It is renowned for it's capital city, Marseille and it's Calanques which were recently (April 2012) declared National Parks due to their uniqueness. At a caving point of view, this region has some notable underwater caves like the Cosquer cave . Grottocenter has a detailed cave inventory of this region with 562 caves . We are also lucky enough to have an active member of the GrottoCenter community who has enrich the available information for this region. So, Guy Maurel give you access for example to the Daladé cave map. Thanks to him and to all the GrottoCenter's contributors.

Lebanon is a small and be autiful country on the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It is also a really rich place for caving : Grottocenter has 285 caves for this country. The most famous caves are the Jeita Grotto (finalist of the New 7 Wonders of Nature ) and the Afqa Grotto. The coordinates usually used for caves in Lebanon are the Lebanon Lambert, however, with GrottoCenter you can convert it to any other coordinate reference system. For more information about caving in Lebanon you can contact the association Libanaise d'études spéléologiques .