SACS Home Page

Survey and Cartography Section
of the National Speleological Society

Home

Contacts

Meetings

Compass & Tape

Cartographic Salon

Resources

Welcome

Welcome to the Survey and Cartography Section's (SACS) website. SACS is an internal organization of the NSS whose purpose it is to improve the state of cave documentation and survey, cave data manipulation, and all forms of cave cartography.

SACS is made up of a diverse group of cavers who are interested in sharing ideas, technology and opinions on the science and art of producing digital and traditional cave maps, on methods of cave data collection and reduction, and for improving the digital manipulation and representation of cave survey data. Anyone interested in cave mapping and cartography is welcome to join.

The Section holds an Annual Meeting, a Survey and Cartography Session, and a Cartographic Salon at each NSS Convention. Section business is conducted at the annual meeting. Papers, presentations, and discussions are featured at the Convention session and the Cartographic Salon is an exhibit of traditional and digital cave maps which feature the best work of national and international cartographers.

Late news:

Aaron Bird and others are doing a series of Zoom presentations on digital cave surveying.
Details about the presentations and an initial schedule are available here.

Membership: SACS is no longer collecting dues as we currently have sufficient funds for current activities for many years, and we have decided to publish Compass & Tape as an electronic only publication, saving much of the annual costs of membership. Please email the SACS Treasurer, Bob Hoke, bob@rhoke.net, your name & email address to become a member of SACS and be kept up-to-date on all upcoming activities.

NSS Convention Session: SACS sponsors the Survey & Cartography Session at the annual National Speleological Society Convention, at which presentations are made on a variety of topics of interest to cave surveyors. Anyone is welcome (and encouraged) to do a presentation at the session. See the Call for Presentations for more information.

NSS Convention Session Abstracts: Abstracts of many Survey and Cartography Session presentations made at NSS Conventions are available in a searchable PDF file here 59 pages, 380 Kbytes). After downloading, the file can be searched with most PDF viewer programs.

Cartographic Salon: At each NSS convention there is a Cartographic Salon where cave maps are displayed and judged in different categories. For more information go to the Cartographic Salon Page on this site or http://www.caves.org/committee/salons/Cartographic.shtml on the NSS website.

	SACS Facebook Group. SACS has an active presence on Facebook. Click the Facebook logo to go there.
	SACS Patch: SACS has an official patch! The 4” diameter cloth patch was designed by Jason Richards. The patch is available to anyone for a paltry $5 and the price includes postage. If you order two or more patches at once, the price for the first one is $5 and the additional ones are $4 each. Click here for an order form.

This page last updated or verified on March 24, 2025