Pyroduct Digital Catalog

The largest morphological dataset of terrestrial lava tubes.

More than 1,200 cross-sections from 119 lava tubes, digitised and manually retraced from the speleological literature and from LiDAR surveys. It covers Italy, Spain (Canary Islands), Portugal (Azores), the United States (Hawaii, Oregon, New Mexico, California), Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia, Ecuador (Galápagos), Iceland and China, and it is the geometric library behind Pyroduct.

Download version 3.0 from Zenodo

Explore the caves

All 119 lava tubes in version 3.0, each with its code, survey and source.

Markers show volcanic regions, not cave entrances. Select one to list its caves.

CodeNameRegionDrawingsSurveySource
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Download this index as CSV

What's in the download

DXF
Cross-sections grouped in tables by country and region. Each cell is 35 × 35 m; the first surveyed section sits in the top-left cell and the last in the bottom-right.
TXT
Each cross-section as its own file, ordered from the main entrance to the end of the cave, ready for CAD, 3D modelling or analysis.
XLSX / CSV
One row per cave with its bibliographic and descriptive details.
Codes
Each tube has a code made of country initials, region initials and a number, for example IT.SIC.04.

Versions

  1. 3.0

    Index extended to 119 lava tubes in 11 countries, with new entries from Ecuador (Santa Cruz Island, Galápagos) and Iceland. Two lava tubes in China are listed and their sections will follow in the next update.

  2. 2.0

    Every cross-section also available as an individual TXT file. Three LiDAR-derived collections: Grotta di Monte Intraleo 2, Ship Cave and Skull Cave. Updated index workbook.

Contribute to the Catalog

Have you surveyed a lava tube, or do you know a published survey that is missing? Send it to us: after review it can be added to a future version of the Catalog, with credit to its authors.

What to send

The survey drawings (cross-sections, long. profile, plan map) as DXF, TXT, PDF or images, or a LiDAR or laser scanner survey as a point cloud in .e57 or .las, together with the details of the Catalog Index:

Name
The name of the cave, and its cadastral number if it has one.
Country
The country where the cave is.
State/ area
Region, island or volcanic area, for example Sicily, Mt. Etna.
Drawings
Which ones are available: cross-sections, long. profile, plan map.
Reference
The publication the survey comes from, in Harvard style, if it is published.
Survey authors
Who surveyed the cave, and who drew the survey.
Instruments
For example compass, inclinometer and tape, DistoX, laser scanner or LiDAR.
Date
When the survey was made.
Notes
Anything else useful: access, partial surveys, licence of the drawings.

The Pyroduct Db code is assigned by the authors. Please send only material you have the right to share: the sender takes full legal responsibility for the material shared, and the Catalog is released under CC BY 4.0.

How to send it

Open a contribution on Codeberg: the form is already set up with these fields, and you can attach the drawings to it; point clouds are usually too large to attach, so share them with a download link. You need a free Codeberg account. Without one, write to us through the contact form with the details and a link to the files.

Propose a lava tube on Codeberg

How to cite

The Catalog is released under CC BY 4.0: you can reuse it freely with attribution.

Dataset

Romio, F. A. P., Marraffa, A., et al. (2026). Pyroduct Digital Catalog (Version 3.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14535885

Paper

Romio, F. A. P., Lobosco, G., Sauro, F., Pozzobon, R., & Marraffa, A. (2026). Pyroduct: A novel parametric software for the simulation of terrestrial, lunar, and Martian lava tubes. Icarus, 447, 116904. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2025.116904