The Cardikarst project was well represented at the 32nd International Karstological School held in Postojna, Slovenia, June 16th–20th 2025. Three presentations focused on various aspects of the Cardikarst project were well-received by the conference participants, providing high visibility to our successful project and leading to stimulating discussions about our work. Dalibor Paar gave a highly interesting talk entitled “Dynamics of Permanent Ice in the Deep Caves of Velebit Mountain, Croatia: Implications of Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change” detailing methodologies for cave climate monitoring developed within the Cardikarst project and how the results obtained provide data on extreme weather events and broader climatic variability within the karst system. Nenad Buzjak presented a poster “Microclimatic controls on CO₂ dynamics in caves: insights from Samograd Cave (Croatia)” exploring results from 3-year monthly monitoring of air temperature and CO₂ indicating the cave microclimate variability was controlled by the cave morphology and temperature-induced convective airflow. Vanessa Johnston presented a poster “Hydrogeochemical monitoring of the Postojna–Planina caves system to study carbon transfer between air, water and rock” showing results of monitoring the CO2 concentrations and hydrogeochemistry of air and water in various sites along the Pivka River flowpath that permit an understanding of carbon transfer within the karst massif. The wide interest generated by our presentations reflects the success of the Cardikarst project and highlights the significance of the topic of CO2 variability and dynamics within karst systems.
The International Karstological School was organised by the Karst Research Institute ZRC SAZU and the abstracts can be found here.
Text Vanessa E. Johnston
