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Mehedinti Mountains: Cioaca cu Brebenei and Closani Caves

2018; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-319-90747-5_18

2364-4591

Ioan Povară, Virgil Drăgușin, Ionuț Cornel Mirea,

Geology and Paleoclimatology Research

Since both caves developed in similar geological and hydrogeological conditions, they are presented in this chapter side by side. Although very different in size, both caves are well-known for their wide diversity of speleothems. Cioaca cu Brebenei is an 85 m long cavity that hosts some of the largest and most spectacular helictites of the Romanian karst. The cave has been carved by the Izvorele Creek, a right-side tributary of the Motru River. Cloşani Cave is one of Romania’s most thoroughly studied caves that hosts the only underground laboratory devoted to a variety of “in situ” cave studies. The cave has two major galleries (Laboratories and Crystals) summing up 1458 m of passages. Abundant and diverse speleothems, including shields, draperies, eccentrics, helictites, and gorgeous calcite pool spar crystals, are decorating the Crystals Passage. Cloșani appears to be a base-level cave, genetically connected with the flow of the Izvorele Creek and at a later stage of the Motru River. U-series analyses of speleothems indicate the cave is older than 600,000 years. Both caves are speleological reservations (Protection class A) located within the Domogled-Valea Cernei National Park and the ROSCI-0035 (Romanian Sites of Community Importance) “Natura 2000” Site.