About this survey
Karstwater is a field guide to one process: rain falling on limestone, and everything that follows from it on the western edge of the Jura.
The water makes the reculées — blind valleys that eat backwards into the plateau. It comes back as springs at the foot of the cliffs. Some of it crosses a buried salt bed and comes up brine, and a whole industry of pans, thorn galleries and pipelines grew on that fact. Below the edge, the same geology puts grey marl under the vines; on the plateau, the grass the water feeds becomes milk, and the milk — pooled, because no single farm had enough — becomes the great cooperative wheels of the fruitières.
The site is organised as five sections, one per subject, and every guide states where it sits on the water’s route: onto the plateau, through the rock, out at the spring, into the pan. Places, geology and dates are factual. There is no tourist information here, and nothing is for sale.
cercoop.org is an independent publication. It is not CERCOOP Franche-Comté and has no affiliation with it.