Speleological Investigation of the Largest Limestone Massif in Georgia (Caucasus)
Open Journal of Geology, 2017, 7, 1530-1537 http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojg ISSN Online: 2161-7589 ISSN Print: 2161-7570 Speleological Investigation of the Largest Limestone Massif in Georgia (Caucasus) Lasha Asanidze1, Zaza Lezhava1, Nino Chikhradze1,2 1Vakhushti Bagrationi Institute of Geography, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia 2School of Natural Sciences and Engineering, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia How to cite this paper: Asanidze, L., Lez- Abstract hava, Z. and Chikhradze, N. (2017) Speleo- logical Investigation of the Largest Limes- Georgia is home to multiple, widespread limestone massifs with well-devel- tone Massif in Georgia (Caucasus). Open oped karst areas and their associated landscape features found throughout the Journal of Geology, 7, 1530-1537. country. Due to geological, geomorphological, and speleological characteris- https://doi.org/10.4236/ojg.2017.710102 tics of the limestone massifs in Georgia, there are developments in classical Received: September 26, 2017 karst processes and landforms, which contain very impressive karst features, Accepted: October 23, 2017 such as dolines, caves, calcite depositions and others. For example, in Georgia, Published: October 26, 2017 the world’s deepest caves are found, such as: Krubera-2197 m; Sarma-1830 m; Pantyukhina-1508; Ilyukhina-1275 m; Kuibyshev-1110 m, and others. Of Copyright © 2017 by authors and these, Krubera Cave is currently the deepest in the world. The goal of this Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative work is to present speleological investigation of Muradi Cave, which is devel- Commons Attribution International oped in Racha limestone massif. Muradi Cave is unique as the fact that it con- License (CC BY 4.0).
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