Hidden Earth 2024

Where does all the water go? The Northern Caves & Karst Hydrology Database - what it is, what it can tell us and what you need to do to help

45 minute Lecture|Phil Murphy

Abstract

The Yorkshire Dales has a long history of water tracing experiments but the records of these endeavours, both professional and citizen science, are often not easy to find. The Northern Caves and Karst Hydrology Database is the result of a lockdown project to try and pull all the records into one easily accessible format ensuring the data are available to cavers and other interested parties. This talk will cover the history of water tracing in the Yorkshire Dales, what the database is, how to use it and what it can tell us. It will also highlighting shortcomings of the available data, how cavers can help overcome such issues and what lessons we learned to help other considering similar project to try and answer the cavers question of “where does all the water go?”.