Topological Analyses of the Hungarian Non-Karstic Caves

Abstract

This paper provides a quantitative study of the Hungarian non-karstic cave geometries and topologies, to define the relationship between speleogenetic processes and cave patterns. To study the planar and morphological characteristic of non-karstic caves, define similarities and differences between them, order groups we used cave-map based topological and geometrical parameters. The recognized characteristics are in a tight context with the development of cave morphology, and the morphometrical characteristics can be generalized. The topological and geometrical parameters show for a cave or a cave- section the most important cave developing force (among other forces), which can be the base point to place a cave in a speleogenetic-system. This study demonstrates that modelling topological parameters such as connectivity, density of connections and passage density can effectively classify non-karst caves into different morphological categories, revealing that most Hungarian non-karst caves exhibit simple geometry and only 11% of them show complex, networked structure