BCCS Cave Atlas
Everything the Butler Cave Conservation Society knows about the caves of Burnsville Cove, in one 3D map: the surveyed passages under the LIDAR ground surface, the geology they're cut into, where the water goes, and decades of trip reports, digs and studies.
001Why
Cave surveys live in Compass files, the maps on paper, and what's been learned about the caves in newsletters, emails and people's heads. None of that shows you how a passage sits under the ridge above it, which sinkhole it runs beneath, or which way the water goes.
The atlas puts it all in one place you can turn around in 3D, and lets members add to it: a new survey, a dig, a bat count, a dye trace. The club has excellent cartographers already. The atlas doesn't replace their maps; it shows what's underground in three dimensions and keeps the club's record together.
002What it does
Caves in 3D
Compass surveys are loaded and closed into passages shaped by the LRUDs and the drawn maps, under 1 m USGS LIDAR. Colour by depth, elevation, survey year, cave or rock unit; x-ray through the ground; slice sections; draw profiles and cross-sections.
Geology
A 3D stratigraphic model interpolated from the published geologic maps, cross-sections and bedding measurements, so every station knows which formation it's in.
Water
Karst basins and springs, stream channels worked out from the LIDAR, streams traced station by station through the caves, and every dye trace, with a flow diagram for each spring.
The surface
Sinkholes found automatically from the LIDAR, dig sites, entrances, historic and geologic base maps, property lines and landowner notes for the club.
The record
Trip reports, photos, observations and studies linked to where they happened, and a searchable library of the club's newsletters.
Members only
Viewer, contributor and admin roles, restricted records for sensitive sites, and an audit trail of every change.
003How it's built
- Front end
- three.js for the 3D view (level-of-detail terrain tiles, passage meshes, fat lines), Preact with signals for the interface, bundled with esbuild.
- Back end
- Python and FastAPI, SQLAlchemy over PostgreSQL / PostGIS, so the club's layers also open directly in QGIS.
- Terrain & analysis
- rasterio, NumPy and SciPy for the LIDAR: terrain tiles, hillshade, the sinkhole finder, drainage and stream channels.
- Hosting
- Docker Compose on a small VPS behind Caddy, with automatic HTTPS.
004Thanks
The atlas stands on the work of the BCCS surveyors and cartographers who mapped these caves over the decades, and on the published geology and hydrology of the cove. It's a non-commercial project for the club. Cave locations stay private: the atlas is open only to members.