Journal of the Bulgarian Geographical Society 41: 10-17, doi: 10.3897/jbgs.2019.41.2
Microclimatic characteristic of the Chelevechnitsata cave in Western Rhodopes
expand article infoStoyan Kyurkchiev
© Stoyan Kyurkchiev.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Kyurkchiev S (2019) Microclimatic characteristic of the Chelevechnitsata cave in Western Rhodopes. Journal of the Bulgarian Geographical Society 41: 10-17. https://doi.org/10.3897/jbgs.2019.41.2
Open Access
Abstract
Chelevchinitsa Cave is formed in the southwestern part of the Dobrostan karst region, Western Rhodopes. It has been subjected to microclimatic monitoring since April 2016. Air temperature, cave water and sediments are periodically measured at eight points, and thus the air humidity is determined. A micro-climatic zoning of the cave was being done on the basis of the analysis of the data on the temperature regimes for the period 2016–2018. A link has been sought between cave microclimate and global climate change using available data for the period 1979–2017 . The issue of the influence of the anthropogenic load on the speleomicroclimate as well as the impact of the cave enviorment on the health and safety of the tourists is also discussed. Particular attention is paid to the role of cave ventilation on the gas composition of the cave atmosphere, and especially on the regime of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and radon (222Rn).
Keywords
karst, caves, microclimate, speleoatmosphere, monitoring