Cave Kru？？ica in Lika - Speleogenesis and Exploration Perspectives

Sa？etak In te 1960's a dam on Lika river was built for hidropower plant Senj. During the injection-drillings, a vast cavern was found near the dam position, which was a potential water-loss project hazard. Geologists and speleologists were hired to explore the found cavern. Some of them later monitored the injection process, controlling if any injection material leaks in the cavern. Further careful studyshowed that the cavern was river Lika's sinkhole during pleistocen. In the postglacial period, or still in the riss/w？rm interglacial, large amounts of snow and ice have melted through. As the capacity of the cavern was insufficient for that flow, water begun to overflow the lowest edge of the sinkhole basin. Further erosion and corrosion of water drilled the canyon Sklope downstream. As the water was no longer submerging through the cavern, a large quantity of calcite was deposited in speleothems. This work proposes sampling and dating of the oldest deposites using U/Th method. This will provide an insight in the downstream canyon formation, as well as in climate changes of that period. Reliable climate results for pleistocene and holocene should generally provide a model for today's and future climate changes