Cave surveying symbols

Techniques, equipment and issues. Also visit the NSS Survey & Cartography Section.

Moderator: Moderators

Cave surveying symbols

Postby gillip » Jun 8, 2007 10:14 pm

What standard cave survey symbols are used most commonly in the US?
I have noticed a lot of variation on cave maps, but the maps I have are of varying ages.
For the small ammount of cave surveying that I have done, I have used the UIS Cave Survey symbols, which I know (at least think) are the standards used in the UK and Europe.
Last edited by gillip on Jun 9, 2007 12:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
JAG

"I think we need more data..."
User avatar
gillip
Frequent Poster
 
Posts: 81
Joined: Apr 8, 2007 8:38 pm
Location: Little Rock, Arkansas
  

Postby Teresa » Jun 9, 2007 8:29 am

Around here (MO-AR) its a mix of the MSS symbols and (found in an appendix of the Art of Cave Mapping Mo Speleo by Ken Thomson and Robert Taylor ) and the NSS symbols. Not a hill of beans difference between them.

Surveyors still also make up their own symbols.

The UI--what?? (Just kidding.) Don't want no furrin cave map symbols dropped from black helicopters.
Teresa
NSS Hall Of Fame Poster
 
Posts: 1413
Joined: Dec 31, 2005 9:06 pm
  

Postby gillip » Jun 9, 2007 12:23 pm

The only reason I use the UIS is because my earliest surveys were helping a friend of mine from Ukraine map a few little caves and he gave me a book with the UIS symbols. The caves were in Arkansas and were used for a hydrology research project. I have the NSS symbols, and they seem similare to the UIS symbols. I'll take a look at the MSS symbols. I imagine they are pretty similar as well. I guess as long as the symbols are self explanatory or you make include a legend, made up symbols should be ok. One map I have has some crazy symbols and I finally figured out that the mapper was making different symbols for different fossils and either wasn't a great sketcher or the map had lost some resolution through repeated copying.
JAG

"I think we need more data..."
User avatar
gillip
Frequent Poster
 
Posts: 81
Joined: Apr 8, 2007 8:38 pm
Location: Little Rock, Arkansas
  

Postby Lee.Florea » Jun 11, 2007 9:32 am

Please continue to use the UIS list for most of your symbols. It is quite well used throughout the world and certainly makes your maps easier to interpret.
Lee.Florea
Frequent Poster
 
Posts: 70
Joined: Nov 19, 2008 12:16 am
Location: Bowling Green, Kentucky
NSS #: 37909FE, LF
Primary Grotto Affiliation: Green River Grotto
  

Postby George Dasher » Jun 12, 2007 3:06 pm

There is a thread called "Cave Survey Symbols" further down the Surveying page.

It contains a list of symbols.
User avatar
George Dasher
NSS Hall Of Fame Poster
 
Posts: 693
Joined: Sep 22, 2005 2:00 pm
Location: West Virginia
NSS #: 16643
Primary Grotto Affiliation: Charleston Grotto
  

Postby Lurah_GB » Jul 21, 2007 8:51 am

we use....standard from BCRA
User avatar
Lurah_GB
Occasional Poster
 
Posts: 40
Joined: Jul 8, 2007 9:20 am
  

Re: Cave surveying symbols

Postby Leitmotiv » May 18, 2010 10:59 am

I am drafting a map for a lava tube. This lava tube has an inflated floor with a crack along it's axis. On both sides of this crack the floors tilt downward toward the walls of the lava tube. I have not seen a cave symbol for this feature. The On Station book does not have the symbol and neither does the UIS symbol list. Does anyone know where I can search for it (if it exists)?
Leitmotiv
Prolific Poster
 
Posts: 166
Joined: May 17, 2006 4:39 pm
Location: Salem, Oregon
Name: Matt Skeels
NSS #: 53428
Primary Grotto Affiliation: Oregon High Desert Grotto
  

Re:

Postby Jeff Bartlett » May 18, 2010 2:29 pm

Lee Florea wrote:Please continue to use the UIS list for most of your symbols. It is quite well used throughout the world and certainly makes your maps easier to interpret.


I would actually disagree here, rather strongly. I'm not opposed to there being a global standard, but the UIS set is so infrequently-used in this country that it actually causes more confusion than it solves. It would be like an Arkansas resident giving everyone directions in meters and kilometers, you're liable to get shot even though it's probably a better idea on paper.
"Although it pains me to say it, in this case Jeff is right. Plan accordingly." --Andy Armstrong
User avatar
Jeff Bartlett
NSS Hall Of Fame Poster
 
Posts: 948
Joined: Jun 29, 2007 12:19 am
Location: Chattanooga, TN
Name: Jeff Bartlett
NSS #: 59325
Primary Grotto Affiliation: Tennessee Cave Survey
  

Re: Cave surveying symbols

Postby Buford » Dec 1, 2011 3:06 pm

It has been a while since I drafted my last cave map, but I have recently gotten back into surveying and mapping Florida air-filled caves. Frankly, I am surprised at what I perceive to be the current NSS surveying and mapping situation, with there being three sets of cave mapping symbols used in the USA. Hopefully, I am wrong about that perception and you nice people will set me straight.

Another surprise was to learn that the NSS website has some BOG vote documentation that there is an NSS-approved set of symbols, yet the NSS website neither cites a reference to it nor provides an internal or external link for it. Surely, this is an oversight, and if not, surely a selfless, experienced US cave surveyor is willing to write it up for the NSS webmaster to post?

I am looking at the MSS-NSS (no ready link) and UIS (http://tinyurl.com/858vh83) cave symbols, and am trying to determine which would be better for my FL use. Obviously, if I intend my maps to be used outside the USA, UIS symbols are the obvious choice. OTOH, I doubt that few non-FL cavers would want to view my FL cave maps, and sadly, we use English measurements here, so the pragmatist in me will use feet rather than meters for FL cave maps.

I have looked at some of the differences among the three symbol sets for their applicability to FL’s usually small caves. Specifically, our caves are characterized by having small, often intermittent pools (calling them lakes is funny), lots of Recent and Pleistocene bones, lots of critters, only occasional stal, frequent phototrophic entrance stal (is there a better name for them?), occasional duck-unders (= sumps), little stream- or air-flow, frequent to numerous bedrock pillars, and abundant speleogens forming curtains and debris cones from overhead solution pipes that often define cave passage edges. Here are some of my observations from that assessment:

Phreatically-formed FL caves often have small pools of water that represent the top (water table) of the Floridan Aquifer. A lot of the pools have passages that a surveyor can clearly see extending underwater and leading out of sight. Because defining them accurately can be done only by diving, dashed-lines are an adequate temporary solution for representing them until cave divers can be coaxed into exploring them. Nonetheless, one can often see the underwater passages and they should be shown on cave maps, but current MSS, NSS, and UIS symbols make poor plan view depictions. Hatching is used in all three symbol sets for plan views, and drawing dashed passage lines within the hatching is confusing, making them look like incompletely erased mistakes. I think the MSS (p. 11) use of concentric dashed ‘sub-circles’ for pools is a valid start, but I will modify it for my use on plan views to only two concentric sub-circular solid lines as I have seen used on nautical charts. MSS wins a half-point.

The UIS symbol for cross-sectional views of pools sucks IMO. The rest of the world’s hydrological disciplines use a single horizontal line for the water table, as does the MSS / NSS (p. 14) symbol. However, the rest of the hydro-world adds a small hollow triangle pointing downward and touching the line, plus 3 short and ever-shorter horizontal lines below the triangle and water line (the net effect is similar to an electrical grounding symbol). With or without the triangle, underwater passages can be easily drawn. MSS and NSS win.

MSS has a bedrock pillar symbol that is the same as the UIS sump symbol – a potential conflict. However, the use of a standard geological bricked symbol (long horizontal lines connected by offset, short vertical lines) works very well. In fact, MSS uses this symbol for cross-sections showing lithologic control, and it makes sense to use that same symbol for plan views and cross-section views. The NSS symbol for a bedrock pillar (two directional hatching) is just too hard to draw small (not scalable). I see no UIS symbol for bedrock pillars, so perhaps my link to their system is an abbreviated version? Or perhaps the UIS method is to draw a hollow outline of the pillar? MSS wins half and standard geology wins half.

The MSS and NSS (and British) symbol for an underlying passage works for me, but the UIS symbol depicted on the NSS Survey & Cartography Section’s webpage (http://tinyurl.com/7bcw8es) does not show the two passages touching, as they do not in reality. I presume that the S&C Section’s webpage version differs from the 1999 version due to more-recently voted updating? UIS wins.

I confess that I do not understand why MSS has differing symbols for underlying (p. 1) and overlying (p. 2) passages. Are they not just different points of view? What am I missing? Buford loses.

I prefer to leave off the UIS’s tiny arrow pointing in the direction of a cross-section’s viewpoint. MSS depicts it both ways. As Aristotle said, “Anything that does not add, detracts.” MSS/NSS wins.

FL cave pit entrances are usually vertical solution pipes of relatively uniform diameter that open into a phreatic room having a nearly horizontal ceiling, justifying a UIS dripline symbol. This works well with the UIS ‘pit open to the surface’ symbol. The MSS sinkhole symbol might confuse a reader because it could indicate either a depression within the cave, a sinkhole overlying the cave, or a pit entrance. In combination with the MSS ‘change in ceiling height’ symbol, however, it would look like a sinkhole within a hilltop. The NSS pattern, which is tick marks all the way through the line, overlaps with the ‘change in ceiling height’ symbol when the pit entrance and ceiling change are close to each other, as they typically are in FL. I could eliminate the ceiling height change in some cases, but on the cave map that I am currently drafting the subcircular pit transitions into a pit attached to a fault (tadpole-shaped), and the widened fault extends well above the flat ceiling. Thus, the UIS version’s solid subcircular line indicates for me an entrance rather than a contour, leaving real contours to be depicted by the other lines. UIS wins.

Incidentally, the concept of the indeterminate cave wall as depicted by all three symbol sets is a thing of the past for me, as I use a Stanley Fat Max distance laser that is alleged to be accurate to a tenth of an inch. It is really nice to be able to determine radial wall distances from the center of a room without having to lug the dumb end of a tape over there. It also makes solo surveying easy. Buford wins.

Any and all comments welcome, especially if you spot errors in my logic or have experience drawing the issues that perplex me. Everyone wins.
User avatar
Buford
Frequent Poster
 
Posts: 70
Joined: Jan 12, 2011 6:22 pm
Location: FL in winter/spring & NC in summer/autumn
Name: Buford Pruitt
NSS #: 17920
Primary Grotto Affiliation: Florida Speleological Society + Flittermouse Grotto
  

Re: Cave surveying symbols

Postby Jeff Bartlett » Dec 1, 2011 7:57 pm

Buford wrote:Another surprise was to learn that the NSS website has some BOG vote documentation that there is an NSS-approved set of symbols, yet the NSS website neither cites a reference to it nor provides an internal or external link for it.


This makes you the only NSS member in the country who is surprised that the NSS website is lacking stuff.
"Although it pains me to say it, in this case Jeff is right. Plan accordingly." --Andy Armstrong
User avatar
Jeff Bartlett
NSS Hall Of Fame Poster
 
Posts: 948
Joined: Jun 29, 2007 12:19 am
Location: Chattanooga, TN
Name: Jeff Bartlett
NSS #: 59325
Primary Grotto Affiliation: Tennessee Cave Survey
  

Re: Cave surveying symbols

Postby trogman » Dec 2, 2011 10:40 am

Funny thing, I was just having an email discussion with someone this morning about this very subject. It is something that has given me fits in the past, and continues to do so. So Buford, I get the impression that your maps are going to consist of symbols taken from all different sources. I guess that is OK, as long as you provide a fairly complete legend to help the map reader interpret your meaning. I do the same thing, and my next map will be my first that includes a legend. I do agree with you about the UIS having the best version of the entrance pit- it sets it apart from any other pits or domes that are in the cave.
A couple of things I am dealing with on my current project: I have a dome within a room that goes up and through a section of bedrock, so it is possible to look through it from both the top and bottom. It is actually near the entrance pit, and is more or less a parallel pit. I could show it as a "dome," using the circular pattern of "change in ceiling height" symbols. Or I could show it as a "domepit," using a circle of the cross-shaped symbols.
The other one that has been giving me problems is a point in a large room where there is a "doorway" at floor level that is ~5' wide. The ceiling at this place is about 50', and the walls curve up and outward, so that the opening is about 25-30' wide at the top. How does one depict the narrowness of the opening at the bottom, while still showing that the top is wider? I could use the "slope" symbol (chicken feet), but the feature is not really a slope, but more like a wall. :shrug:
I do plan on putting in a cross-section view at this location.
Any ideas or suggestions?

Trogman :helmet:
User avatar
trogman
NSS Hall Of Fame Poster
 
Posts: 1017
Joined: May 2, 2008 8:35 am
Location: North Alabama
Name: Stephen Brewer
Primary Grotto Affiliation: Gadsden Grotto
  

Re: Cave surveying symbols

Postby self-deleted_user » Dec 3, 2011 2:10 pm

I cant find it, but someone send me a link to a pdf a while back that had all the symbols categorized and then as you go across columns it is for the different...areas? Like...what is UK standard vs the US standard type thing (forget the names, but there were like 4 columns). It was reallly super handy and I was going to post it...and now I cant find it...Anyone know what Im talking about?

I found this one from an old cavechat topic link http://www.carto.net/neumann/caving/cav ... nglish.pdf but that isnt the one I am thinking of. The one I am thinking of had like 4-5 different symbol standards from multiple countries side by side.
Self-deleted due to large troll population on the forum, and absence of moderation.
self-deleted_user
NSS Hall Of Fame Poster
 
Posts: 1408
Joined: Aug 6, 2010 8:33 pm
Location: Offline, in real life, with real cavers.
  

Re: Cave surveying symbols

Postby Buford » Dec 3, 2011 3:16 pm

Steve

My previous post was (not clearly, I admit) meant to ask for advice on my conclusions. Today, I am mapping Mud Dome Cave, which I surveyed yesterday. It is a single-room cave with one crawl entrance, one pit entrance, one bedrock pillar, and three small domes (plus the usual spiders, bones, roots, etc: http://onrappel.blogspot.com/). Pretty simple. I found that I do indeed like the UIS entrance pit and dome symbols, and I plan to leave the bedrock pillar hollow. I could add a legend, and have done so in the past, esp when thinking that non-cavers (like landowners I am asking for access permission) will be looking at the map, but MDC is so simple that a legend seems unwarranted. The symbols for detritus and dried mud seem inappropriate for FL caves, since they nearly cover the floor everywhere. The UIS symbol for bones differs from the MSS version in that the former is solid and scalable, whereas the latter is hollow and not as easily scalable. I am liking the UIS system better so far.

Your description of the "dome within a room" is not too clear to me, but I guess your x-section will make it clear to the reader. Heh, a dome that intersects two or more levels of the cave and can be viewed as either a down-pit or an up-dome could be represented by the NSS symbol for a pit entrance, as the tick marks pass thru the circular outline and could indicate both an up direction and a down direction. But let's not go there! LOL

Sungura

Are you thinking about the MSS publication? It has their symbols, NSS symbols, and a few different 'British' symbols.

All

I am having issues with all systems' indicator for the location of a x-section. I want to draw a single zig-zag x-section for Mud Dome Cave because that allows me to encompass multiple features with a single illustration (geologists do this all the time when portraying geologic x-sections). If I draw x-sections clear across the rooms, I'll need to draw several x-sections to depict all the features I think warrant picturing, and each x-section will have boring and redundant portions. Too, I am drawing the x-section locator all the way across the cave plan view to show where the zig-zag transect samples the cave. How do others deal with this issue? Maybe a dash-dot line, or a dash-dot-dot line?
User avatar
Buford
Frequent Poster
 
Posts: 70
Joined: Jan 12, 2011 6:22 pm
Location: FL in winter/spring & NC in summer/autumn
Name: Buford Pruitt
NSS #: 17920
Primary Grotto Affiliation: Florida Speleological Society + Flittermouse Grotto
  

Re: Cave surveying symbols

Postby self-deleted_user » Dec 3, 2011 3:31 pm

Perhaps? It was here: http://www.incavedigitalsurvey.com/illu ... ymbols.pdf but its not there anymore. I knew I should have downloaded and saved it when I was first told about it!
Self-deleted due to large troll population on the forum, and absence of moderation.
self-deleted_user
NSS Hall Of Fame Poster
 
Posts: 1408
Joined: Aug 6, 2010 8:33 pm
Location: Offline, in real life, with real cavers.
  

Re: Cave surveying symbols

Postby Martin Sluka » Dec 3, 2011 4:02 pm

Just to compare different symbol sets

Martin

Image
User avatar
Martin Sluka
NSS Hall Of Fame Poster
 
Posts: 402
Joined: Mar 17, 2006 11:28 am
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
Name: Martin Sluka
NSS #: 29010
  

Next

Return to Survey and Cartography Forum

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users

cron