Introduction

Abstract

Karst is as dramatic a feature of the earth’s surface as it is unique and complex. The manifold and convolute landforms, the complicated and delicately adorned caves, the bizarre drainage systems and collapse structures have few anologs in other kinds of terrains. But these features are only the most obvious in an array of surface and subsurface structures which range in size down to the submicroscopic and comprise systems that are only partly understood—systems that, quite uniquely, form almost entirely by dissolution.