Глубочайшие карстовые пропасти и крупнейшие пещеры мира и СССР

Аннотация

The deepest karst chasm of the Earth is Jean-Bernard in the Savoy Alps (France), 1490 meters deep. 20 caves and chasms are deeper than 950 m, including three at the USSR territory- Snezhnaya (1335 in) and Napra (970 m) at the Bzyb Ridge, Caucasus; and Kievskaya (950 in) at the Zeravshan Ridge, Central Asia; they rank 3rd, 18th and 20th according to their depth. The longest (considering total length) karst cave is the Flint - Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, USA-34l,l km. 14 caves are longer than 40 km, including 3 at the USSR territory- Optimisticheskaya (147 km) and Ozernaya (l04,5 km) at Podolia and Zolushka in Bukovina (76 km) which rank 2nd, 4th and 6th according to the length. The paper gives revised and completed data on karst caves dimensions as compared with those published in the «Karst» by the same author («Nature of the Earth» series, Moscow, 1981).