Written by Cody Allen, CSEEES Autumn 2025 Intern

In the opening of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, a young Indy explored rock formations and a cave in Utah during a Boy Scout expedition. Throughout his journey in the cave and because of his attempt to protect an ancient item from treasure hunters, he gained an interest in both archeology and the preservation of artifacts. 

For Jure Tičar, his own childhood experiences mimicked those of Indiana Jones: he frequently visited local archaeological excavations in caves (though without fighting treasure hunters) and these excavations sparked an early interest in nature and exploration. Though his interest in archeology and history initially carried over to secondary school, Jure became less interested in history because for him, “…it (History) was more about presenting the facts, not really the stories of history.” This led Tičar to study geography in college and graduate school. He saw geography as both providing a holistic approach to understanding Earth’s processes while also opening an avenue for him to protect nature while working in the field. He eventually came to focus on karstology, geomorphology, and the study of cave pollution while working on his PhD. 

After college, he continued to work on the study of cave pollution. His field of study further evolved while working at the Anton Melik Geographical Institute, as this role saw him focus on the cryosphere and the study of ice caves as proxies for climate change. Outside of working at the Institute, Tičar is the head of the Cave Protection Commission in the Speleological Association of Slovenia, a member of the European Cave Protection Commission, a caving instructor, and a caving rescue team leader.  and a caving rescue team leader.   

When discussing ice caves, Tičar described how they can provide important information about the earth’s climate history: “Caves are seen as this stable system because they can persist for millions of years in the same condition... Especially in higher latitudes and elevations, you tend to have consistently lower temperatures. If you have karst caves, any precipitation that goes through the karst can become entrapped inside these caves as ice.” He explained that as cave ice often becomes stratified, each layer contains a unique geochemistry and mixture of isotopes that can then be drilled out and studied to learn more about local and regional atmospheric and climate conditions. 

Compared to glaciers, which receive direct contact from precipitation (i.e. snow from avalanches or direct rainfall), ice formed in caves comes from precipitation on the surface that then flows through karst/cracks in the surface, leading to water dripping in caves and forming layers of ice over time. Because of this indirect process, ice layers in caves are formed via different precipitation events being “mixed” together while flowing through the surface karst. But while glacier ice is better representative of individual precipitation events due to direct contact, it is much less shielded against climate change or other events that may melt the ice, compared to ice in caves which is more stable over time. 

The information provided by ice caves is invaluable in the study of the past conditions of Earth’s climate and atmosphere, especially due to their long-term stability. However, the data it provides, according to Tičar, can often be overwhelming in scale: “We have often created large datasets from different parameters because we are measuring the air temperature, rock temperature, ice temperature, the inflow of the water in the system (cave), the temperature of the water in the system, and so on. We are also creating regular LiDAR scans of the cave to see differences over time.” Despite each cave providing unique indicators, he mentioned that due to the sheer size of data collected and parameters measured, it can be hard to denote any unique trends seen in the caves. 

Because of this, Tičar explained that AI could be an important tool to process this data: “I think that it would be useful to have AI incorporated in the study of ice caves to see the peculiarities of certain ice caves and what events may be really important for them, understanding the dynamics of the ice within the cave.” He spoke to the fact that not only could AI reveal peculiarities, anomalies, or correlations that may be missed due to the size of datasets, it could also be used to process data more efficiently, improve the modeling of the data, or be employed for predictive modeling to see which caves may be the most vulnerable to ice melt. 

Yet climate change has posed a serious threat to ice caves and the study of them in general. In Tičar's own words: “I think that we are one of the last generations that can do this job because the rates of melting nowadays could be enormous”. The current rates of climate change, he argues, could turn the study of caves into a race against time.  For example, as some caves are losing 50cm of ice a year, this represents decades worth of important local climate data lost. He warned that many ice layers could disappear within decades. 

Not only does ice melt represent a threat to data preservation, but many species could lose their habitat. Cave animals that live in ice caves could lose their habitats and become extinct if the current rate of climate change continues. While climate change can additionally open previously inaccessible parts of caves, allowing much older data to be extracted from the ice, it comes at the expense of more recent data and important habitats being lost.