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Monitoring of the cave environmental settings in Modrič show cave (Croatia)

Modrič Cave is the only Croatian show cave open for the adventure tourism, thus without any man- made construction or other intervention. Small guided tourists groups (usually 2-20) equipped with caving gear spend usually one-two hours within the one of two channels, so major impact from the visitors is not expected. However, cave morphology also plays an important role in cave atmosphere settings. The cave is 829 m long and completely horizontal, with relatively thin overburden (1-30 m). Nevertheless, it maintains stable cave atmosphere in terms of air temperature and relative humidity (Rudzka et al., 2012 ; Surić et al., 2017). As for the cave air CO2, measurements have started in 2017 in order to reveal natural temporal and spatial variation of cave air CO2 concentration. Recorded winter and summer pCO2 values of the innermost part of the Right channel vary significantly between 1400 ppm and 7600 ppm, respectively, while additional anthropogenic CO2 influence recorded after the tourist groups is notable, but minor in comparison to the natural pCO2 values. References: Rudzka, D., McDermott, F., Surić, M., 2012. A late-Holocene climate record in stalagmites from Modrič Cave (Croatia). Journal of Quaternary Science 27, 585-596. Surić, M., Lončarić, R., Bočić, N., Lončar, N., Buzjak, N., 2017. Monitoring of selected caves as a prerequisite for the speleothem-based reconstruction of the Quaternary environment in Croatia. Quaternary International, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.06.042.

CO2 concentration, cave environment, show cave, Modrič Cave, Croatia

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