Matienzo Cave Search
Help and explanations

The Matienzo Cave Search page should answer the questions that Matienzo cavers are always asking, eg Where's a good draughting dig in Cobabdal? and What caves are still going in Riaño? The generated lists can be browsed or printed off and copied into other applications, eg GPS devices, spreadsheets, etc.
The user will narrow down a search ending up with the required list of sites. So, to answer the first question above would require 3 stages: first choose Cobadal from the area list, second choose dig from the interest list then type draught* into the text search box.
Any choices boxes, eg science or order, that are not required can be ignored and will not be used in the search.
All lists returned are actively linked to the full site description via the "code". The site desciption opens in a new window or tab depending on the browser.

Area Search
The scrolling choice box is populated with all of the areas in the Matienzo database. The number of named areas is probably too many but that's how it is at the moment! A link to a map is provided to help visualise areas. Clicking on an area will limit all subsequent choices to that area until after the Search button is clicked. The default is for all areas to be chosen, so clicking the Search button with all the choices in default positions will list all the Matienzo caves in alphabetical order.
More than one area can be chosen: use CTRL-click to select more than one isolated area, eg Cubija and El Naso. This facility is necessary when looking for caves over a wide area. For example when searching for sites on the hills to the east of the Matienzo depression, Muela, Mullir and La Colina should be chosen. Clicking the search button will then show 3 scrollable windows listing all the sites in the 3 areas.

Entrance altitude range
The default is to show all sites whatever the altitude, including those that have an unknown altitude. As soon as an altered altitude range is chosen, unknown altitudes are removed and the search is carried out on sites with a known altitude. So looking for sites in all areas between 10 and 900m will show just the caves with a known altitude. As another example, a search for those site entrances between 230 and 210m can be enhanced by showing the altitude column and sorting in altitude order.

Interest
The area search can be further limited by choosing one from a set of "interests", ie dig, still going and unexplored. Using the previous example of sites on the mountains to the east, choosing La Colina, Muela and Mullir and then clicking unexplored would narrow the search down to unexplored sites on those hills.  

Science
Similarly, a choice can be made to view sites with archaeological or biological interest (as indicated in the database).

Entrance accuracy
Entrances (over 40 or so years) have been positioned on old maps, newer maps and by people with different spacial and geographical skills! Recently sites have been positioned using GPS. An attempt has been made to classify position accuracy: GPS readings have been given a value of 1; sites positioned on maps with reasonable accuracy, 10; sites roughly positioned, 100. (These numbers can be used as a "radius of error" in metres.) Some sites have unknown grid references.

Display Order
The returned results can be ordered by name, site number, length (a list from longest to shortest), depth (a list with deepest first) and altitude (a list with highest first). The lengths of some caves are set to 0, eg Caravueso, Llueva, Coteron, etc as they are parts of bigger systems. Azpilicueta has the total length of the South Vega System and Cueva Hoyuca has the total length of the Four Valleys System.

Scrolling Lists
To aid browsing, the lists of sites returned are shown in small, scrollable windows. There is the option to choose a print/copy view which simply lists all the chosen sites in a (long) table. This can be printed or copied and pasted into other applications.

Columns to show
By default, the code, name, length and depth of sites are shown and ticked in the choice box. Up to 12 columns can be displayed. (There is not much point in not displaying the code column, as this has the link to the site description.)

Proximity Search
This section allows the user to find out which sites are within an approximate given distance of a known site. The distances can be chosen from 20, 50, 100, 250, 500m and 1km. The area is searched as a rectangle (not a circle) and the sites returned as a list. In addition, for distances of 50, 100 and 250m, a map is shown with the selected site in the centre of the square. The map displayed is active and each site can be clicked on to bring up the description.
In the 1km-side map, the browswer may plot the graphic to fit into the window. If you wish to see the graphic full size as soon as it is loaded then, in
- IE go to Tools/Internet options.. /Advanced and under the Multimedia heading untick Enable Automatic Image Resizing.
- FireFox go to Tools/Options/Advanced and untick Resize large images to fit in the browser window.
- Opera ?
(The map squares are not easy to read - at least in the 500m version. This is a problem with plotting jpegs out of AutoCAD and is being researched! Hovering over the site in the map will generate a "ToolTip" which includes the site number. The date of the maps may well be earlier than the other dates. This means that the maps could differ from the more uptodate data in the tables.)

Full site descriptions search
Whatever sites have been chosen can be (further) narrowed down by looking for certain words or phrases in the text description. The details of this facility are explained here.

Some examples
Question: Which caves on South Vega, North Vega, Cubija and El Naso had magnetic susceptibility work carried out?
Procedure: Choose areas Cubija, El Naso, N Vega and S Vega then type "magnetic susceptibilty" (with the double quotes) into the search box. Six caves are returned at the bottom of the search page.
Question: Which archaeological caves are mentioned in the 1975 expedition publication?
Procedure: Choose archaeology within the science choices then type "Kendal Caving Club and Manchester University Speleological Society, 1975" into the search box (including the double quotes) and 18 sites are listed. (It is likely that just typing "Society, 1975" would find the same caves.)
Question: What caves have good formations around La Secada and El Naso?
Procedure: (We assume that some mention is made in the text if there are decent formations). Choose La Secada and El Naso then in the text box type formations helictites calcite stal* (without double quotes). A search for these words returns 44 sites in those areas.

Finally...
When a set of results is returned, the query form at the top is reset. If you want to use the previous choices and perhaps alter just one or two of these, then use the back button.

Juan Corrin 26/12/07