- Author: Hilary Reinhart
- From: Master of Environmental Management, Graduate School, Universitas Gadjah Mada
Abstract:
With their high value and various features, caves can be easily overexploited by mismanagement of caves. One of the utilization of caves are to be used as tourism sites. Cokro cave is one of the cave in Geopark Gunung Sewu which had been a tourism site. Initiated by local people, it had developed and become one of the favorite site to be visited. With its unique and fragile ecosystem, it is very important to assess and recognizing features and the characteristics of caves. One of the methods used is Cave Ecosystem Profile. This method is chosen because its simplicity and interdisciplinary in assessing the cave and the visual result. It uses ecosystem by inventorying physical and biotical features and building correlation among them. The inventory then will be visualized in a cave map to show the spatial distribution of those features along the cave passage. From the inventory, management will be able to choose the right strategy in keeping all of those features. The inventory of the physical features are including the speleothems, speleogens, sediments, passages form and all of the geomorphological process and aspects. Speleothems found are stalactites, flowstones including gourdam. The passage forms consists of chamber and collapse. These physical features become attraction and habitat for the microchiropteras, arachnids, rhaphidophoridae, and swallows. In every single habitat, disturbance from the tourist will affect the biota and the geological features. To minimizing the impacts, some behavioral protocols and modifications are necessary to be made as conservation strategies. All of these are summarized and visualized using Cave Ecosystem Map.
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