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Karstwater — rain falling on limestone,
and everything that follows from it.

02

Springs

Rain sinks on the plateau and comes back at the foot of it. How the limestone stores the water, loses it, gives it back — and how you prove which water went where.

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Close-up of jagged limestone rock face with weathered fissures and rust-colored mineral streaks
Through the rock

The rock is the reservoir

Limestone stores rain in fissures and gives it back at a spring, so the flow answers the weather with a delay measured in days.

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Everything in Springs

  • 2.1

    The rock is the reservoir

    Limestone stores rain in fissures and gives it back at a spring, so the flow answers the weather with a delay measured in days.

    Through the rock
  • 2.2

    Swallow holes

    Where a surface stream goes underground and stops being visible.

    Through the rock
  • 2.3

    Dye tracing

    Colouring the water to find out which spring it comes out of.

    Through the rock
  • 2.4

    Flood response

    A karst spring can multiply its flow in hours. What that does downstream.

    Out at the spring
  • 2.5

    Hard water

    Dissolved limestone carried out and re-deposited as tufa.

    Out at the spring
A karst spring emerging at the foot of a cliff
The engine of the landform — a karst spring delivering water, and weak acid, to the foot of the cliff.Photo: Walter Alejandro / Pexels

Elsewhere in the survey