Hidden Earth 2017

Lost Caves and Submerged Landscapes. Recording the relic caves and submerged karst of Tir Gwyr (The lost lands of Gower)

45 minute Lecture|Mr John Cooper

Abstract

The Gower Peninsula is surrounded by water on three sides but for around 90% of the last million years sea levels were lower and consequently further from the cliffs. To help understand the formation of the relic cave systems of the peninsula and Tir Gŵyr, now lost below the Bristol Channel, it is necessary to consider how the peninsula formed and the influence of later ice sheets, as together they created a framework of passages influencing stream flows and associated cave development.
Many of the peninsula’s caves are important for their fauna or human occupation and in the southern cliffs Paviland Cave is the site of the oldest Gravettian burial in Western Europe. But however important these caves might be, with just a few exceptions the caves of Gower hold little interest for the sports caver.
My talk is about these relic caves, unwanted and unloved by most of the caving fraternity and how through field walking, using GIS, LiDAR, seabed bathymetry and offshore sonar surveys I am beginning to reconstruct some of the ancient karst landscapes of Tir Gwyr and locate some of the lost caves that lie below it.