Since the beginning of 2016, six more volumes of the inventory of Polish caves containing descriptions of more than a thousand objects have been published. Currently, the number of the inventory volumes is 32.
On the website: http://jaskinie.pgi.gov.pl visitors can now see a total of more than 4 thousand caves and similar natural objects in Poland.
Six new volumes of the inventory of Polish caves were issued in the first half of 2016 by the Main Board of the Polish Society of Friends of Earth Sciences (Polskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk o Ziemi, PTPNoZ). The work commissioned by the Polish Geological Institute - National Research Institute (PGI) was financed by the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management (NFEP&WM). The project cost 1.28 million zlotys - reported the spokesman for the National Fund Sławomir Kmiecik in a release sent to PAP.
Recent volumes contain records of more than a thousand caves in the area of the Carpathians, the Tatra National Park and the Olkusz Upland.
The nationwide inventory project started in the 1980s. It is carried out in the framework of the PTPNoZ activities by Jerzy Grodzicki, in cooperation with Tatra cavers from Polish speleological clubs. In the years 2008-2011 - thanks to the cooperation between PTPNoZ and PGI - the Polish caves subsystem was created in the Central Geological Database with a web application for the presentation of data on these objects. This work was also funded by NFEP&WM.
In total, the website Polish Caves (Jaskinie Polski, http://jaskinie.pgi.gov.pl) provides information about more than 4100 caves and similar natural objects in Poland. It contains information about their location, descriptions, bibliographic and natural science data, plans, sections, and photos.
According to NFEP&WM, the service Polish Caves is the most current compendium of documented knowledge about the caves. It is also a source of reference spatial data and can serve as starting material for research, teaching activities, tourism and sports.
Six new volumes of the inventory (each issued in five hundred copies) have been provided to local governments, universities, institutes and sports and tourism organizations. They are also available at the National Library, PGI Scientific Library, libraries of branches of the Institute and at the NFEP&WM Geology and Mining Department.
The inventory of Polish caves in the form of a book and website is intended to be used in the implementation of programs to protect nature and the environment (especially protected areas at the municipal level), regions and the whole country. It is also part of the program to monitor the areas potentially at risk of mass movements (caves located within landslides have been marked) and complements the data on the most valuable objects of inanimate nature in Poland (they are included in a separate site Geosites - Geostanowiska, http://geostanowiska.pgi.gov.pl/).
Inventory and publishing work for the Polish caves will be continued. The thematic scope will be specified in the publishing plan prepared for the years 2017-2018, in the next agreement with the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management.
PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland
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