Start Date
August 2014
Abstract
Lava Beds National Monument contains lava caves with a variety of significant ice resources. Caves with seasonal melting of some ice resources provide an important source of water for wildlife within the monument and have had many historic uses over the past several decades. In other caves, perennial melting of previously stable ice floors is increasing, with some caves experiencing total ice loss where deposits were greater than 2 meters (6 feet) thick. Simple ice level monitoring has occurred in sixteen of the thirty-five known ice caves since 1990, supplemented with varying amounts photo monitoring. Though this monitoring reveals changes in the level of many ice floors, it does not detect changes in ice volume or differential changes across an ice floor (Thomas, 2010). To increase the quality of ice monitoring, Lava Beds staff are field testing and refining a combination of surface area and ice level measurements to estimate the change in volume of ice floors inside the five most significant ice caves within the monument. This new protocol is being established in accordance with the National Park Service Klamath Inventory and Monitoring Network’s Integrated Cave Entrance Community and Cave Ecosystem Long-term Monitoring Protocol (Krejca et al., 2011). The goal of this long-term monitoring protocol is to document changes in cave environments using several different parameters, including ice.
Included in
Ice Cave Monitoring At Lava Beds National Monument
Lava Beds National Monument contains lava caves with a variety of significant ice resources. Caves with seasonal melting of some ice resources provide an important source of water for wildlife within the monument and have had many historic uses over the past several decades. In other caves, perennial melting of previously stable ice floors is increasing, with some caves experiencing total ice loss where deposits were greater than 2 meters (6 feet) thick. Simple ice level monitoring has occurred in sixteen of the thirty-five known ice caves since 1990, supplemented with varying amounts photo monitoring. Though this monitoring reveals changes in the level of many ice floors, it does not detect changes in ice volume or differential changes across an ice floor (Thomas, 2010). To increase the quality of ice monitoring, Lava Beds staff are field testing and refining a combination of surface area and ice level measurements to estimate the change in volume of ice floors inside the five most significant ice caves within the monument. This new protocol is being established in accordance with the National Park Service Klamath Inventory and Monitoring Network’s Integrated Cave Entrance Community and Cave Ecosystem Long-term Monitoring Protocol (Krejca et al., 2011). The goal of this long-term monitoring protocol is to document changes in cave environments using several different parameters, including ice.
