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batrotter wrote:It is an interesting topic. The Indiana Cave Survey defines a cave as being 25 feet long or deep.
A number of ICS members did a cave inventory in the Hoosier National Forest. The US Forest Service defines a cave as anything big enough for a human to enter. So the USFS says a 3 foot diameter hole is a cave.
Squirrel Girl wrote:I think the NPS says a cave must be 50' long (or deep). Anything smaller is a "karst feature."
LukeM wrote:It seems a bit odd to me that there are "karst features" that you can go "caving" in. Colloquially, everyone would say they went in a cave if the walked or crawled through a 49' natural cavity. Why should the definition be changed to artificially limit the count?
LukeM wrote:I guess what I'm saying is that if there's a feature that everyone in your regional caving community would call a "cave" but it doesn't qualify to go on your state's list of "caves" that's kind of weird.
In your example Trogman that would be like everyone calling 18 year olds adults and treating them as such but when everyone sits down to decide what an adult is by law they choose 30. No one would call a 2' deep hole a cave so that's irrelevant.
trogman wrote: In terms of caves, if you had no size requirements designated, then I could find a 2' deep hole and call it a cave. Then our state cave surveys would have to catalog a gazillion little holes.
GroundquestMSA wrote:trogman wrote: In terms of caves, if you had no size requirements designated, then I could find a 2' deep hole and call it a cave. Then our state cave surveys would have to catalog a gazillion little holes.
No they wouldn't. That's the basis of my argument. If all length requirements were thrown out, we wouldn't have a bunch of cavers desperately scrambling to document 7' deep vugs in the cliff face. State Surveys have no responsibility to document 7' deep holes in the cliff face, no matter what they're called. It is the perceptions and judgment of the discoverer that defines the discovery. If I found a 10'-long cave, blasting air, in a prime geologic setting, I would want to document it, even if I didn't have the resources to excavate it. When I find a body-sized hollow in a pitted cliff face, I feel no need to document it, or call it a cave, so I don't. Like Luke, I say that if someone would call it a cave in conversation, it's a cave.
You're absolutely right trogman, cutoffs are arbitrary and imperfect. Since that's the case, why use them when we don't need to? Virtually all of the same things will be documented, maybe a few more, only under a single, more sensible name.
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