ASU Scientist Takes Part in Creating Atlas of Russian Caves

The edition presents the most interesting caves of our country from Crimea to Kamchatka. The contents include, among other things, information on the Baskunchak cave, presented by Associate Professor of Astrakhan State University, Candidate of Geographical Sciences Ilya Golovachev.

In 2017, the Russian cave inventory was created upon initiative of President of the Russian Geographical Society Sergey Shoygu, after which a bridging grant for creating a special atlas was won in 2018. Ninety-nine authors took part in compilation of the edition.

The Atlas of Russian Caves is the first edition that provides detailed information on distribution and structure of the largest and most interesting caves (including karst, blister, glacier, gravity, wave-built, etc.) in the entire territory of Russia. The atlas presents interesting data on ecology, mineralogy, glaciology, archeology, paleontology, biology and origin of caves, history of their discovery and exploration.

The information on the Baskunchak cave, which is the largest cave in the Caspian Depression, is presented in the atlas thanks to Ilya Golovachev, Candidate of Geographical Sciences and Associate Professor of the ASU Department of Wellsite Geology, Hydrogeology & Geochemistry of Combustible Fossils.

The Atlas of Russian Caves will be interested to speleologists, explorers of caves as well as to specialists of related fields — geologists, geographers, biospeleologists, ecologists, paleontologists and archeologists.