Western Codzo Cave
-18.549722,34.880278
Description
Codzo village, Codzo zone, Cheringoma district, Sofala province. 34°52'49"E. 18°32'59" N (GPS WGS84), ca. 230 m asl. Surveyed on 1 Sept. 1998 by Herbert Daniel Gebauer, Adriano Germano and Michael Laumanns (BCRA-Grade 4b). Length: 612 m. Vertical range: -33 m. The Codzo area with it’s deep river gorge provides enough hydrological potential for the surface water to carry sediments out of the caves. The Western Codzo Cave with 612 m of passage length proofed this result of water activities. The cave is characterised by huge rift passages (SW-NE and SE-NW), some Smaller interconnection passages and many daylights. It is a cave of the ,b)-type” and it is the second longest cave currently known in Mozambique. The entrance to the cave is a collapse doline at the plateau above the western bank of Codzo river and at a linear distance of approximately 1,5 km downstream of the northern entrance of Codzo River Cave. The entrance (and the other nearby roof collapses and daylights) is hidden in dense vegetation and can be reached from Codzo village in a 30 minute march including a descent and an upclimb through the Codzo river valley. The side elevation of the mapped galleries show 3 different passage levels which makes the Western Codzo Cave the only surveyed cave in the Cheringoma plateau with a clearly visible development of different niveaus. In the most southern parts of the cave the lowest level leads down to a water level in a small fissure which is apparently not the recent karst water table at the niveau of the nearby Codzo river. In a small chamber in the eastern extension of Western Codzo Cave an extremely interesting conglomerate infilling cemented by calcarenite during a marine transgression can be observed. The conglomerate consist of rounded limestone apparently transported through a former roof collapse into the cave. In a later phase of activity the underlying part of the deposit was removed which allowed access to the chamber again. Therefore, the speleogenesis of Western Codzo Cave can be generalised as follows: Uplift of the Eocene sediments, cave development mainly by corrosive solution presumably in the Mio-Pliocene, roof collapses, infilling of the surface conglomerate, sea transgression and cementation of the conglomerate, recent uplift (probably Quaternary), removal of sediments and conglomerates by surface water. The cave contains a few calcite formations (dripstones and gours) and several guano accumulations. The biospeleology of the cave is rich. In the northern parts of Western Codzo Cave lives a big colony of fruit bats. More bat species were noted amongst them the Small Hipposideros caffer caffer SUNDEVALL 1846.
Inside the cave there were numerous colony of bats. The cave is rich of invertebrates; on the guano there were Blattidae, larves of Trichoptera and Coleoptera. On the walls Orthoptera Raphidophoridae, Hymenoptera, Diptera, Arachnida Pseudoscorpion, Araneida, Opolionida and Amblypygi were present, Inside small scallops, with guano on the walls, Crustacea Isopoda were present.
Documents
Western Codzo Cave 15/11/2015
Caves nearby
| Distance (km) | Name | Length (m) | Depth (m) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.4 | Smaller Eastern Codzo Cave | 40 | 10 |
| 0.7 | Eastern Codzo Cave | 156 | 22 |
| 1.9 | Ninga Niamabawa | 130 | 10 |
| 2.1 | Upper Codzo River Cave | 40 | |
| 2.1 | Ninga Cupicua | 4 | |
| 2.1 | Mazamba Valley Caves | ||
| 2.2 | Codzo River Cave [Grotte de la Rivière Codzo] | 942 | 33 |
| 4.2 | Ninga Miriango | 610 | 10 |
| 5.5 | Ninga Manguenje | 188 | 10 |