3-D CAVE MAPPING IN THE PALEOKARST REGION OF BATU KATAK IN NORTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA

The Batu Katak village in Northern Sumatra, Indonesia is located in the Batumilmil formation, a paleokarst that consist in dark gray to reddish gray limestone. A group of scientists from the University of Puerto Rico with Harimau Consevation Organization explored the karst forest and mapped 5 caves as a conservation action to protect the karst forest and its geological importance. This region is impacted with Palm oil farms and possible mining. The goal of this study was to create the cartography of the caves that surround the village: Water Cave (~ 901 m, 59.5M data points), Pupuk Mentar Cave (~121 m, 22.9M data points), Mbelin Cave (~100 m, 15.7M data points), Sibayak Cave (~36 m, 10.2M data points), Jodoh Cave (~45 m, 6.8M data points). The cartography was created by using the Geoslam ZEB1 LiDAR and the data was processed using Matlab. These caves maps are going be used to for sustainable ecotourism and to understand the karst biodiversity including trogloxenes (bats, snakes, cave swallows, and many more) and Sumatran tiger, critically endangered species that based on physical evidence during this study used one of the caves as habitat.