This bilingual scientific monograph with many illustrations presents the Velika Pasica cave, located on the outskirts of the Gornji Ig village on the Krim massif, around 20 km south of Ljubljana, ...Slovenia. The book presents ecological, taxonomical and biodiversity studies, as well as morphological and historical facts referring to the cave. The cave is small for Slovenian standards, as it is only 105 metres long. On the basis of the specimens collected in the cave, 13 new species from terrestrial and aquatic habitats have been described so far. A considerable number, even on the global scale. The cave was first renowned for the rare cave-dwelling beetles, snails as well as other species. In 2000, a rich community of aquatic animals was discovered, which were not expected to be present there. Since 2006, there have been regular measurements of ecological parameters as well as sampling of fauna from four permanent drips. Fauna was washed-out from a thin layer of dolomite, from which the cave roof consists. The measurements include water and air temperature as well as discharge, measured in one hour intervals. Furthermore, 88 analyses of drip water and an equal number of fauna sampling were conducted. The measurements in the cave were being conducted simultaneously with the measurements of the meteorological parameters on the surface, in the immediate vicinity of the cave entrance.
More accurate interpretations are required in order to understand the processes of hydrological movement and hydrochemical variation of water flow in epikarst. A drip VP1 from the Velika Pasica Cave ...(Central Slovenia) was studied during a period which occurred at the end of a long wet, cold winter. The sources of the percolation water in the cave were both from rain water and snowmelt water. The discharge was continuously monitored during study period in one hour intervals. Each hour a water sample from the drip was taken for measurements of pH, electric conductivity and major ions concentrations. Because of the specific climatic condition in the shallow cave, the dilution effect is the dominant mechanism in the hydrochemical processes, determining drip water properties. The effect of CO2 corrosion and prior calcite precipitation (PCP) was weakened with that condition; Mg2+ varied slightly more significantly than Ca2+, which was reflected by the high correlation between Mg2+, Ca2+ and micro-variation of Mg/Ca ratio. The variation of pH followed closely to the changes of other parameters, which is rarely noted in other works.
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