Berliner Höhlenkundliche Berichte, Volume 40-41: Atlas of the Great Caves and the Karst of Southeast Asia

About this book

Language: English with trilingual abstract in English, German, and French

In 2002 the Atlas of the Great Caves and the Karst of Africa was released in this series (Laumanns 2002a, b, c). It had two updates (Laumanns 2005, Laumanns 2007) before a second edition of the atlas was finally released (Laumanns 2008a, b, c).

This publication became a standard reference work and an idea was born to use the same concept for compilations on other regions of the world. This resulted in the atlas currently in front of you, representing a region which contains some of the most varied and spectacular karst morphologies in the world. In April 2009 the world’s ’biggest/longest’ passage was found in Hang Son Doong in Vietnam (Phong Nha–Ke Bang National Park, Quang Binh Province). Sarawak Chaüber in Lubang Nasib Bagus (Malaysia) is the world’s largest underground chamber. Clearwater Cave (Sarawak, Malaysia) at 175 km is the longest in Southeast Asia, and currently 10th longest in the world.

The Atlas of the Great Caves and the Karst of Southeast Asia, is based on the Atlas of the Great Caves of the World (Courbon et al. 1989), on the Atlas des Cavités non Calcaires du Monde (Chübert & Courbon 1997), as well as on the Encyclopaedia Biospeologica (volume III) (Jüberthie & Decu 2001) and on the Encyclopaedia of Caves and Karst Science (Gunn 2004).

The Speleological Abstracts, published annually by the UIS, served as source for publications after 1980. Furthermore, valuable information on the latest French speleological campaigns in Southeast Asian countries was taken from the annual reports of the “Commission des relations et expéditions internationales” (CREI) published by the Fédération Française de Spéléologie.

In the reference lists the articles that have been seen by the authors are printed in italic letters. All north direction arrows on the cave maps refer to magnetic north.

Contents

Part 1 (volume 40):     
Introduction 5
Acknowledgements 7
General tectonic and geological settings with special reference to carbonate deposition (by Michael Laumanns) 8
The 20 longest and deepest caves of SE Asia 14
Brunei Darussalam (by Liz Price) 19
Cambodia (by Michael Laumanns) 21
Indonesia (by Michael Laumanns & François Brouquisse) 41
Laos (by Michael Laumanns) 103
Malaysia (by Liz Price & Dave Clucas) 143

Part 2 (volume 41):
Myanmar (by Liz Price & Michael Laumanns) 177
Philippines (by Michael Laumanns) 203
Singapore (by Liz Price) 239
Thailand (by Martin Ellis & Michael Laumanns) 241
Timor East (by Liz Price) 295
Vietnam (by Michael Laumanns) 299

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