Karst Caves of Georgia and it’s Perspectives

Author: Lasha Asanidze
Keywords: Speleology, Karst processes, Caves, Geomorphology.
Annotation:

Georgia is rich with beautiful and unique karst forms, where the distribution line of karsted rocks (limestone) stretches at a 325 km distance along the southern slope of the Caucasus, from the river Psou to the south - east of the Lake Ertso vicinities. Total area of the karsted territories makes 4475 sq.km or 6, 4% of Georgia's entire territory. Georgia is one of the unique regions of the Earth according to the distribution of the karsting rocks the analogue of which can be hardly found in the any part of the planet. Due to the standard conditions of karstogenesis the karsting maximum depth exceeds 2000 m. There are all prerequisites for development of cave tourism in Georgia. Abundance of karst caves and variety of underground halls are stipulated by a geological and geotectonical structure of the territory, namely, by quite wide distribution of Cretaceous limestone in the karst regions of western Georgia (Abkhazia, Samegrelo, Imereti and Racha). We have basis to assume that development of speleo investigations in Georgia is optimistic and realistic. From world’s ten deepest karst caves 4 are situated in Georgia - First three position occupy ,,Kruber (2197m), Sarma (1830 m) and “Iluzia-snow-Mejeni” (1753 m) caves situated in high mountain limestone massifs At present there are 89 karst abysses on our planet with the depth of more than 1000 m. 17 out of them are located in Austria, 16 - in Spain, 13 - in Italy, 9 - in Mexico, 7 - in Georgia, 7 - in Slovenia, 6 - in France, etc. There are several ten unstudied underground monuments in Apkhazeti, Samegrelo, Racha and Imereti regions. During the last 50 years a lot of works were done, but hence we do not know much about Georgian the most interesting underground phenomena. For abounding in debit underground basins are still inaccessible for investigators (Shavtskala, Tsachkhura, Rechkhi and others). In the future, our goal is to assess the exploration of unique cave systems and prospects their utilization for tourist purposes by means of traditional and modern geophysical methods.