Danko Taborosi

News reports from Afghanistan during 2001-2002 have highlighted the role caves can play in warfare. The wartime use of caves, however, is not peculiar to this conflict. It has been suggested that caves were used as fortifications at least since the Neolithic times, and that some of the earliest evidence of emerging military command structure and tactics comes from Neolithic cave paintings (Ferrill, 1990). Man-made cave systems were used as bases for Jewish guerrillas fighting against the Romans in Palestine (Watson, 1996), and the Vikings used lava caves as hideouts (Ólafsson, 1993). In medieval Europe, limestone caves were incorporated into castles, such as Pembroke and Carreg Cennen in Wales, and were used for water supply, storage, and defensive purposes (Fry & Lyons, 1997). During the American Civil War, caves were the foremost source of potassium nitrate for the production of gunpowder (Whisonant, 2001). Perhaps the most extensive use of natural caves in warfare in recent times occurred in World War II, when caves on islands throughout the Pacific were involved in many aspects of the war. This article is a summary of the wartime use and associated artefacts in the caves of Guam and the neighbouring Rota, Tinian, and Saipan, part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), in the western Pacific.

Abstract Kázmér, M. and Taborošl, D., 2012. Rapid profiling of marine notches using a handheld laser distance meter. A rapid, single-user profiling method for rocky shores is described. The Leica Disto D8 handheld laser distance meter measures distance up to ...

Por séculos as cavernas tem sido utilizadas para a guerra e ainda hoje ocupam lugar de destaque em diversos conflitos armados. O presente trabalho destaca as cavernas encontradas nas Ilhas Marianas que foram utilizadas durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Tais cavernas pertencem a diferentes tipos de acordo com sua gênese e incluem abismos, fraturas, cavernas vadosas ou cavernas freáticas. É demonstrado com a pesquisa que tais cavernas presenciaram um vasto e variado uso durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, exibindo uma vasta gama de modificações para uso militar e ainda contém importantes artefatos de época.

[English: For centuries caves have been used for war and still nowadays has prominent place in several armed conflicts. This work highlights the caves found in the Mariana Islands used during the Second World War. These caves belong to different types according to their origin and include pits, fractures, vadose and phreatic caves. It is demonstrated through research that these caves witnessed a vast and varied use during World War II, showing a wide range of modifications for military use and also contains important artifacts of that time.]

ABSTRACT The water resources of the 32 atolls of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) are under continual threat from El Niño-induced droughts and other natural hazards. With government policies emphasizing sustainable development of atoll-island communities, local managers are in need of tools for predicting changes in the availability of fresh groundwater, which communities depend upon during droughts that incapacitate rain-catchment systems. An application of a recently developed, readily portable algebraic model is demonstrated here, to estimate the freshwater-lens thickness of atoll islands in the FSM, a key component of FSM groundwater resource assessment. Specifically, the model provides estimates of the lens thickness of atoll islands in the FSM during normal and drought conditions. The model was tested for use in the FSM through comparison with available lens data under both average rainfall conditions and intense drought conditions, and then applied to major islands of each atoll within the FSM. Results indicate that out of 105 major islands on FSM atolls, only six would likely retain sufficient groundwater to sustain the local community during an intense drought.

Karst of carbonate islands is distinct from that of continental settings. The islands' young limestones, which are lithologically heterogeneous and retain high primary porosity, tend to cause diffuse recharge and preclude significant surface flow and subsurface conduit flow. On ...

Eogenetic karst development associated with brittle failure has been identified on Aguijan, Rota, and Tinian, Mariana Islands. Structural control of karst development is common in continental settings, where the rock exhibits low porosity and is highly fractured. Eogenetic karst is ...

Coves and pocket beaches recently investigated on tropical, carbonate islands commonly represent remnants of pre-existing karst voids. Traditionally most cuspate coastlines in bedrock have been attributed to differential rates of littoral erosion along planes of weakness such as soft ...

The majority of islands in the tropical western Pacific are coral atolls. Most are inhabited by indigenous Micronesian populations. Local people have over the millennia developed coping strategies and response mechanisms to difficult natural conditions, including typhoons, erosion, giant swells, and flooding, as well as ensuing famines and epidemics. However, since 1990s residents of atolls in the region have been appealing for help. They indicate that their islands are being rapidly eroded along coastlines, land areas are becoming smaller, and taro patches and other vegetation are being damaged. Such concerns were corroborated by one sweeping assessment by South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission in 1998, as well as various isolated field observations since. Evidence of recent coastal erosion is found locally on many islands, both on windward and leeward sides and ocean and lagoon facing shores. Examples include retreating modern beaches, exhumed beachrock, scouring and undercutting of vegetation, overhanging scarps, etc. In addition, a considerable number of uninhabited islets have been completely obliterated by storms in the recent past; unusually high tides and swells have swept over large populated islands, destroying homes and harming agriculture; and at least one atoll has been abandoned due to irrecoverable typhoon damage. Those problems have received much worldwide media coverage, in which they are generally presented as "sinking" of islands due to global climate change and accompanying sea level rise. In reality, modern atolls are now known to be artifacts of the Pacific mid-Holocene High-Stand, and no first-hand data are available from Pacific islands to discern what proportion of observed erosional phenomena are 1) due to local natural and anthropogenic coastal processes as opposed to global and regional changes, and 2) caused by continuous natural dynamics as opposed to episodic extreme events. It is clear that some islands are faring better than others, and that land is not always eroding but in some cases accreting. We are currently engaged in a systematic survey of islands across the region in order to differentiate local problems from wide-ranging phenomena and gain insight into the temporal and geospatial "big picture." The direct aim is to comprehensively and more precisely assess coastal erosion and quantify changes in land area of different islands over the past 50 years. The project consists of fieldwork and GIS analyses, and it is the first to employ such methods to evaluate shoreline transformation in the western Pacific. We visit each island, interview local people regarding recent land changes and events, and carry out site investigations and mapping. Each inhabited island is circumambulated on foot, and beach slopes and scarps are measured, sediments examined, human activities and vegetation damage noted, etc. More importantly, the entire coast of each island is mapped using MobileMapper PRO portable units capable of generating GIS shapefiles in the field. Created coverages include the actual shoreline, sandy banks, vegetated areas, coastal engineering, control points, etc. Data collected on the ground is imported into ArcGIS and rectified using remote sensing imagery. It is then compared to all available historical maps, notably US Army Corps of Engineers 1960s topographic charts, which were previously assembled, digitized, and georeferenced for the purposes of this project. Any discrepancies in island outline and land area would have occurred over the past half a century. Due to the vastness of western Pacific region and logistical obstacles to working on remote islands, data are accumulated gradually. Ultimately, this island-by-island approach will allow documentation of historical and regional erosion patterns, contribute to understanding of local and global components of recent coastal changes, and deliver recommendations for environmental management and emergency avoidance on atolls and other oceanic low islands.

Speleothem-like deposits have been observed in uplifted Holocene marine notches and coastal overhangs on Tinian and Rota, Mariana Islands. Termed “littoral dripstone” and “littoral flowstone” to distinguish them from true cave deposits, they reflect the basic speleothem ...

Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) is an insular nation in the western Pacific. It consists of 4 high volcanic islands and 37 low carbonate units, mostly coral atolls. The high islands are relatively large, and are developing socioeconomic centers of the country, whereas low islands are small and remote outposts of traditional subsistence lifestyle. The latter are inhabited by a

We have monitored temperature, humidity and light intensity patterns in two caves on Guam by data loggers and found that the microclimatic regimes dramatically change along transects from cave entrances to cave interiors. The general patterns show distinct daily oscillations ...

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