Karst landscapes

Limestone, dolostone, and gypsum are quite common rocks and cover a major part of the land. These rocks are soluble and, as the water reaches them, sooner or later voids are forming in the rocks – and the dissolved material is deposited elsewhere, along the path of streams.

Sometimes, if no other rocks cover the land, the soluble rocks are exposed to the elements and our eyes. And, if the layer of the rock is thick and uniform enough, interesting formations are developing after some time. Well, geological time, e.g. tens of thousands of years or even millions of years (in the case of quartzites).

Wondermondo has included in this category these places of the world where a larger area of soluble rocks is exposed and water has shaped unusual terrain from this rock. And, well, some of these places are VERY unusual!

Take one of such places – Tsingy de Bemaraha in Madagascar. Here the former layer of limestone has been washed away, leaving just narrow, vertical needles and arrows of the rocks, rising even 120 m tall. Walking across such an area is nearly impossible – one gets lost in this natural labyrinth and simply cannot pass over these limestone sheets and needles. Lush vegetation grows among the limestone sheets and needles, many rare and sometimes dangerous creatures live here undisturbed by people.

Take another – Cockpit Country in Jamaica. Here dense rainforest grows over countless steep hills that resemble haystacks. Again – one can get easily lost among the endless “sea” of these giant haystacks.

There are several kinds of unusual karst landscapes, such as:

• Kegelkarst landscapes – areas with numerous very steep hills (cone-shaped, similar to haystacks, etc.) close together. These hills can be just a few meters high, but sometimes they are hundreds of meters tall – such as the unforgettable peaks along the Li River in China. Kegelkarst develops in tropical countries such as Southern China, Vietnam, Philippines, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, and some others.
• Tsingy – areas that are covered with bare, knifelike vertical sheets of limestone. These dramatic karst landscapes are not very common. The best and maybe – most impressive – are the tsingy “forests” in Madagascar, as well as Shilin stone forest (China), Mount Api pinnacles (Malaysia) and some more places around the world.
• Limestone pavements are somewhat less dramatic landscapes if compared with the previous kinds of karst landscapes. These are barren fields of pure limestone – but as this rock is soluble, the surface of the limestone is dissected with shallow runnels, with deep trenches – grikes, smaller holes, and larger holes – sinkholes. Thus a limestone pavement is an unusual, fascinating type of landscape. Impressive limestone pavement is Burren (Ireland) – the world’s largest limestone pavement with an area of 290 km₂.
• Turloughs are very specific places, found almost exclusively in Ireland. These areas have lakes that appear and disappear seasonally – e.g. suddenly appear in autumn and then disappear in the spring. Sometimes these lakes appear in a few hours’ time and then in a few days are gone again.

This category does not include many karst features, e.g. caves and separate sinkholes, rock stacks, karst springs.