Karstbase Bibliography Database

Tectonic research and morphologi calobservations were carried out in six caves (Kalacka, Goryczkowa, Kasprowa Ni¿na, Kasprowa OErednia, Kasprowa Wy¿nia and Magurska) in the Bystra Val ley, in the Tatra Moun -tains. There are three cave lev els, with the youn gest ac tive and the other two in ac tive, re flect ing de vel op ment partly un der epiphreatic and partly un der phreatic con di tions. These stud ies dem on strate strong con trol of the cave pat tern by tec tonic fea tures, in clud ing faults and re lated frac tures that orig i nated or were re ju ve nated dur ing up lift,last ing from the Late Mio cene. In a few lo cal cases, the cave pas sages are guided by the com bined in flu ence of bed ding, joints and frac tures in the hinge zone of a chev ron anticline. That these cave pas sages are guided by tec tonic struc tures, ir re spec tive of lithological dif fer ences, in di cates that these proto-con duits were formed by “tec tonic in cep tion”. Dif fer ences in the cave pat tern be tween the phreatic and epiphreatic zones at a given cave level may be a re sult of mas sif re lax ation. Be low the bot tom of the val ley, the ef fect of stress on the rock mass is re lated to the re gional stress field and only in di vid ual faults ex tend be low the bot tom of the val ley. Thus in the phreatic zone, the flow is fo cused and a sin gle con duit be comes en larged. The lo cal ex ten sion is more in tense in the epiphreatic zone above the val ley floor and more frac tures have been suf fi ciently ex tended to al low wa ter to flow. The wa ter mi grates along a net work of fis sures and a maze could be form ing. Neotectonic dis place ments (of up to 15 cm), which are more re cent than the pas sages, were also iden ti fied in the caves. Neotectonic ac tiv ity is no lon ger be lieved to have as great an im pact on cave mor phol ogy as pre vi ously was thought. Those faults with dis place ments of sev eral metres, de scribed as youn ger than the cave by other au thors, should be re clas si fied as older faults, the sur faces of which have been ex posed by speleogenesis. The pos si ble pres ence of neotectonic faults with greater dis place ments is not ex cluded, but they would have had a much greater mor pho log i cal im pact than the ob served fea tures sug gest.