By: Nick Lo, Jaycee Pineda, Casie Tolentino, Christian Charles. Caves By: Nick Lo, Jaycee Pineda, Casie Tolentino, Christian Charles.

What are Caves? Caves are natural underground void large enough for humans to penetrate. Some people suggest that the word cave should only be used for environments that does not have sunlight. But the term cave is still used for caves with light like lava caves, sea caves, and boulder caves. You could access caves either from the surface of the ground or either from the sea. Caves have been found throughout the world but only a portion of them have been explored and documented by cavers.

What makes Caves Extreme: Caves are subterranean environments (underground). Caves are void of sunlight making it dark inside. And therefore lacks organisms that need sunlight or products of photosynthesis for survival. Caves are starved environments with no plants or edible animals for humans to eat . Organisms in caves have to strive through very hot or very cold temperatures due to caves being subterranean environments.

Where can you find Caves? A number of caves around the world have been discovered and documented . Many caves can be found at America. For example you can find the Famous Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico. Lechuguillla Cave is the deepest limestone in the United states. Its an excellent example of microbial life. The Lechuguilla Cave is a part of the Carlsbad Caverns cave system in southeast New Mexico, it extends to a depth of 1,571 feet (479 meters). Caves in the United States of America From: http://egsc.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/teachers-packets/exploringcaves/graphics/handout2.gif

Technologies used for exploring caves Flashlights / Lights- are used by cave explorers often to help them see in dark, and cold caves. Ropes/Harness- Cave explorers use ropes to climb cliffs. These high places in caves that you could only get to by using ropes. Food- Cave explorers need food because they might be in the cave for several days. Oxygen Carriers/Tanks(?)- they are needed by cave explorers because caves are often subterranean environments. Meaning that they’re underground and there’s no air or high temperatures there. Sometimes if they couldn’t go explore caves by themselves, they send robots in caves. To discover some place s that cannot be reached by humans. Even with supplies with them.

Canadian Contributions Recent scientific technology discovered by A number of scientists mostly from the U.S.A but a few from Canada, are robots. (names and organizations not available due to the difficulty of finding them) A robot is a machine designed to execute one or more tasks repeatedly, with speed and precision. As all of us know , robots not like humans can operate without air or food. And if we discover a protective lining or materials for robots for the temperature at the sites, we can use them to explore subterranean environments, and a number of extreme environments too. An example of a robot that can be used for exploring caves are snake robots. Snake robots can use their many internal degrees of freedom to thread through tightly packed volumes accessing locations that people and machinery otherwise cannot use. Moreover, these highly articulated devices can coordinate their internal degrees of freedom to perform a variety of locomotion capabilities that go beyond the capabilities of conventional wheeled and the recently developed legged robots. The true power of these devices is that they are versatile, achieving behaviors not limited to crawling, climbing, and swimming. Snake robots have also been used for search-and rescue missions in places such as mines, caves, destroyed buildings.

Types of Caves Lava Tube Caves- Sea Caves Lava caves are formed by Volcanoes. They’re formed when the lava continuously flows to the point where there’s a hard crust which thickens and forms a hard roof above the still-flowing lava stream. Sea Caves Sea caves are formed by the power and pressure of the ocean water. The small cracks into the rock create space for the water to penetrate with enormous force. These small cracks are mostly found in weak zones, zone like; weak areas usually a fault or fractured zone formed during slippage, or another zone with different types of rock including weaker rock others. Glacier cave Glacier caves are formed with ice of the Glacier. These caves are mostly formed by the running water either through or under the huge Glacier. Heat transferred from the water creates significant melting and causes and creates an air-filled cavity. The air movement then moves through the air-filled cavity through summer and causes the cavity to enlarge. Some other Glacier caves are formed from geothermal heat either from hot springs from underground, or heat from volcanic vents Boulder Cave Boulder caves are the unusual ones. They are formed for over millions of years of volcanic action, and thousands of years for erosion and weather to shape these enormous caves. Over thousands of years lava flows over the loose rock and soil. After the lava has cooled it makes hard layers trapping the softer layers of loose sediment between.

~Interesting facts~ * The greatest and longest cave system in the world is at Mammoth Cave Park in Kentucky, USA. It has about 591 kilometers (367 miles) of cave system. * Deepest cave is Voronya Cave in Abkhazia, Georgia with a depth of 2,191 meters. This is the difference in elevation from highest entrance to its lowest point. * Kazumura Cave near Hilo is the longest lava tube with a length of 66 kilometers or (41 miles). * Many caves also reveal the history of primitive people and prehistoric creatures that lived on earth. Some also reveal climatic conditions that existed in past. * Some caves are used for aging wine and cheese preservation even today. * Species that live their life in caves are called troglobites.

Types of animals that lives in Caves Numerous animals live in caves, either exclusively or part of the time. Troglobites — not to be confused with troglodytes — are animals that live their entire lives in the dark part of caves. True troglobites lack functional eyes. Troglophiles are animals that sometimes occur outside a cave, but mostly deep in it.. trogloxenes are animals that are capable of surviving inside caves but are mostly found outside of it, like the extinct cave bears. Stygobites are animals found in groundwater in or between caves. Exclusive cave animals are called caverniculous. Some animals that live in caves include salamanders, the Cave Dwelling Rat Snake, many fish, bats, and many arthropods, including insects, millipedes, harvestmen, crayfish, springtails, spiders, etc.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/ess05.sci.ess.eiu.lifecondtn http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/04/0427_cavesextremophiles.html www.i-pi.com/~dianna/lech/ http://egsc.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/teachers-packets/exploringcaves/graphics/handout2.gif http://www.scienceclarified.com/landforms/Basins-to-Dunes/Cave.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biorobotics/projects/modsnake/ http://www.uppercumberlandcaving.net/facts.html http://www.wisegeek.com/which-animals-live-in-caves.htm