Hello, I have just joined the Cave and Karst GIS group as I am interested to see where I can find the most accurate and recent karst/limestone feature layer that I can use for my land development screens.  Any way to visualize karst features from a desktop point of view, would save my team a lot of money and time. Thank you!   Ephrata Yohannes  ... View more

Hi,    I read this interesting article on net and thought to share with community. The Holy Cave of Shri Amarnath Ji is an important pilgrimage destination situated in the Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir and every year thousands of devotees throng this area where the holy cave is situated at an altitude of about 3850m. Holy Cave area is located approximate ly 110 Km from the Srinagar and approximately 15 Km from Baltal base camp. The area can be approached upto Baltal from Srinagar by the motorable road and from Baltal to Holy Cave by the foot track (approx 15 km). The area is represented by extremely rugged, highly dissected, sub vertical to vertical hill slopes (mostly rocky and barren) modified by glacial, fluvial and ground water karst systems and is rep resented by high peaks, U and V shaped valleys with heights above 3850m alt itude. The U-shaped valley of Amarnath exposes limestone rocks with thin shale/slate units of Wuyan Formation of Vihi Group of Triassic age. The upper Amarnath valley consists of thickly bedded limestone with very occasional thin slate units whereas, the lower Amarnath valley comprises of thickly bedded alternate sequence of limestone and slate units. The primary bedding of rocks trend in NW-SE direction with moderate to steeply dipping (20-70°) towards west. The higher and upper reaches in the catchment acted as the barrier to the moisture laden clouds and the steep and narrow profile along the channel of Northern side of Amravati Nala might have provided the orographic climb. The precipitation data, as available through Climate SERV, indicates about 18-19 mm of rainfall around the reported time. The variation in the temperature would have facilitated the sudden downpour over a very limited valley profile, adjacent to the Holy Cave area, thus causing the deluge. The constricted tributary channels/streams of Amravati nala could not cater to the excessive discharge and the wavered flow might have been directed towards the left bank, where the infrastructure facilities and the camps, had been established. It has been observed that several boulders are strewn along the steeper bed of the stream in the upstream area above the waterfall which is assessed as a potential hazard for area lying at lower levels.   Thanks Samriddhi ... View more

After a period of hibernation, the sun has risen, and warmed and awakened us from our caves. Welcome to the newly updated ArcGIS Cave and Karst user group at the Esri Community. This will be a place to connect and share ideas, best practices, and examples of using and applying GIS, with the unique needs and requirements of this community in mind.   You'll have the opportunity to:   Connect, share, and collaborate. Get updates on news and products. Join discussions and ask questions. Share your examples and work with others. Contribute to a knowledge base of tips, best practices, and workflows.     Click “Follow” in the top right corner and select “inbox” in the drop down menu. This will insure you get new updates in your GeoNet inbox and Outlook email.     GeoNet Community Quick tips:   If you do have a GeoNet account and are not logged in yet, you’ll need to click "login" first to join the group and contribute to conversations.    If you don’t have a GeoNet account, click “login” and then follow the steps to create your GeoNet account. Once your account is created, follow Steps 1-3 above.   For any additional questions, general tips and guidelines, please visit the GeoNet Help group, or contact the Cave and Karst group owners:   Bern Szukalski: bszukalski@esri.com Bob Booth: bbooth@esri.com   Thanks for joining and we look forward to seeing you here. Feel free to add a comment to say hello.   If you have additional questions about software, grant opportunities, or anything else, let one of us know. And please let others you think might be interested know about this space. ... View more

Thought I would share my 1st StoryMap with the team here. The storymap has had a few upgrades over the month, I've shared it with friends, co-workers and the local cave club, and lots of positive feedback that they enjoyed the Storymap format. So I do look forward to the next one. This one was made for tablet/phone in mind.  (also thanks Bernard for that earlier assistance) Click below to go to the Samoa Cave StoryMap: ArcGIS StoryMaps  Any further advice on improving the StoryMap is greatly appreciated. ... View more

Sorry if this seems like a rookie question, as I am with self-learning arcgis (online) with only 6 months of tinkering, and I apologize if my GIS lingo is not right. My question is around the structure of cave tables for mainly point data of cave entrances, I have a reasonable list of cave entrance locations - but what is the best way to set up/structure cave tables/tabs?  Is it recommended to create a main tab for the cave and give the cave a unique ID (basic info on a tab/table), and then add other feature tables linking to the Unique ID number eg other tables such as Entrances, property owners, environmental features, surveyors, finder of the cave etc? or just make 1 mega table where possible? Whats the best way to start thinking about the structure of table(s) and the number of tables? I have seen one 1 reasonable articles on the web on example tables, I just thought to ask this group if there are any recommended reading out there or considerations to the structure from others learnings. Many thanks in advance. Karl. ... View more