State Nature Conservancy of the Slovak Republic
Slovak Caves Administration
Water is one of the most important components of cave geosystem. It is necessary for origin of caves spaces, formation of flowstone and ice fills and speleothems, existence of aquatic species of cave fauna. Water represents a transport media through the cave, which can be here accumulated during various time intervals. The karst waters are highly vulnerable. A problem of deterioration of their quality is many times connected with the reasons of gradual destruction of cave decorations and threatening the life of water animals.
Hydrological and hydrochemical research of cave systems resides mostly in monitoring of qualitative and quantitative character of attributes of karst waters and their potential changes in time and space, as well as in explanation of many time very complicated conditions of their underground circulation. The information on the character of these waters are substantial, since they can cause corrosion of carbonate cave fills. The knowledge of mutual relations and communication of surface and underground waters in the karst territory is important for interpretation of results. The outcomes of the hydrological and hydrochemical monitoring are used as entries in dealing with more complex tasks. The conclusions can be used as incentives for effective regulation of anthropogenic activities on the surface of karst landscape.
The monitoring and research tasks are realized by the form of: (1) expedition measurements of several basic physical-chemical parameters of waters in cave environment, or waters directly related, (2) collection of samples with following interpretation of results, (3) continuous monitoring of regime changes of active and occasional water courses, levels of underground lakes and their selected qualitative attributes, (4) observation and mapping of karst hydrological phenomena (ponors, springs). Hydro-indicative tracing experiments are applied for reasons of finding out the underground circulation water ways, as a common method of karst hydrological research.
Hydrological and hydrochemical research of caves in Slovakia is provided mostly by the Slovak Caves Administration in Liptovský Mikuláš. Other vocational organizations participate on several research tasks. Within the problems of cross-border waters in the Slovak Karst we cooperate with the Aggtelek National Park administration in Hungary.
Dear visitors, we would like to inform you that due to the technical conditions of payment terminals, there may be situations when card payment will not be possible. For this reason, we recommend that you have an adequate amount of cash available if you want to be sure that you will be able to visit the cave. Thank you for understanding.
Dear visitors,
after a longer period we reopen the long tour in the Demänovska Cave of Liberty from the 1st of July 2024. The tour is open once a day at 13:15 from June to August (3 months) and at 13:00 during the rest of the opening days. Number of visitors is limited, the tour is demanding, with many steps and it takes more than one and a half hours. Cave temperature is around 7°C whole year round. We are looking forward to your visit.
