Meziad

Pestera Meziad (Padurea Craiului Mountains, NW Romania) is one of the oldest touristic caves of Romania important for its large passages and chambers, massive speleothems and fossil remains. It is a natural monument and part of the ROSCI0062 Natura 2000 site. It is a maze-like cave ~6.3 km long. Owing to its large entrance the cave is well ventilated in its first 300 m of passages. It shelters a large colony of bats, estimated to as many as 20,000 individuals and rare troglobitic invertebrate species have been described. After decades of reckless tourism, the cave was partially rehabilitated in 2012. However, the successful rehabilitation is poorly known among tourists and so far the cave attracts yearly only ~20,000 visitors.

Below you will find some photographs of our group's activities in Meziad.

November 2014 - First installation of monitoring station for calibration and testing purposes

Mez 1 station. Here we monitor the CO2 levels, temperature, relative humidity and luminosity.

A people counter is installed right before the Mez 1 station

Mez 2 station is located within an undeveloped sector of the cave and it is used as a reference station.

Here we monitor CO2 levels, temperature, RH, and drip rate within undisturbed conditions.

The Mez 3 station is placed in the Towers Chamber.

Here we monitor temperature and luminosity changes in response to touristic traffic.

Installation of the Mez 4 station within the lower level of the cave, close to the touristic trail.

Here we monitor CO2 levels, temperature, RH, and drip rates.

All drip rates measuring stations will also be monitored bimonthly for water and calcite geochemistry.

Mez 5 station. Conveniently small and waterproof, the Hobo pendant datalogger can be installed discretely

so it does not interfere with the cave attractions.