The vari­ety of for­ma­tions and the fact that they are con­cen­trat­ed in a restrict­ed area means that the 712 caves cur­rent­ly iden­ti­fied make up a typ­i­cal tem­per­ate-zone karstic sys­tem. Because they dis­play an extreme­ly rare com­bi­na­tion of trop­i­cal and glacial cli­mat­ic effects, they make it pos­si­ble to study geo­log­i­cal his­to­ry over tens of mil­lions of years.