Got word that Mammoth Cave is officially now 400 miles long http://www.nps.gov/maca/parknews/mammoth-cave-400-miles.htm
Anyone in the loop with the CRF care to elaborate on what's been surveyed?
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muddyface wrote:Anyone in the loop with the CRF care to elaborate on what's been surveyed?
Roppelcaver wrote:I only disagree with the comment "Remaining Leads", which suggests things are winding down.
Extremeophile wrote:muddyface wrote:Anyone in the loop with the CRF care to elaborate on what's been surveyed?
The press releases I've read are pretty accurate in that the length has grown steadily with continued efforts to map remaining leads. There are expeditions every month, and a mix of new and resurvey is accomplished with some regularity. I'm only on the periphery of the data management, but I've heard that the official length has had an error bar around it for a long time. Surveys in the cave date back more than 50 years, and there are complex multi-level areas that have been resurveyed many times for a variety of reasons. That, combined with turnover in cartographers, has led to uncertainty about redundancy in some areas. At the same time there are hanging surveys where the tie-ins have been lost. They believe the redundant and hanging surveys roughly offset, but this still leads to some loss of precision. You will probably hear announcements when the length has grown by another 10 miles, but nobody can say exactly when or where the 400th mile was surveyed. Steady progress is being made to resolve these data problems and raise the overall quality of the sketches and cartography. As time goes on there will be better and better certainty around the precise length.
Extremeophile wrote:muddyface wrote:Anyone in the loop with the CRF care to elaborate on what's been surveyed?
The press releases I've read are pretty accurate in that the length has grown steadily with continued efforts to map remaining leads. There are expeditions every month, and a mix of new and resurvey is accomplished with some regularity. I'm only on the periphery of the data management, but I've heard that the official length has had an error bar around it for a long time. Surveys in the cave date back more than 50 years, and there are complex multi-level areas that have been resurveyed many times for a variety of reasons. That, combined with turnover in cartographers, has led to uncertainty about redundancy in some areas. At the same time there are hanging surveys where the tie-ins have been lost. They believe the redundant and hanging surveys roughly offset, but this still leads to some loss of precision. You will probably hear announcements when the length has grown by another 10 miles, but nobody can say exactly when or where the 400th mile was surveyed. Steady progress is being made to resolve these data problems and raise the overall quality of the sketches and cartography. As time goes on there will be better and better certainty around the precise length.
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