Current perspectives on the environmental impacts and hazards in karst

Abstract

Karst geo-ecosystems are highly fragile environments that are suffering a progressive degradation caused by human activities in many regions of our planet. The interactions between Man and karst environments have been relevant since Greek and Roman times (Nicod et al. 1997), but the resulting detrimental effects became particularly significant from the industrial revolution. Despite the long history of human-induced impacts on the karst environments and damage caused by hazardous karst processes, these problems were largely overlooked by the scientific community till the beginning of the 90s. Fortunately, both the perception of the importance of the karst systems and the scientific efforts devoted to their understanding have increased considerably in recent times (Ford and Williams 2007). The results of some investigations have been published in several special issues (Catena supplement, Environmental Geology, Oklahoma Geological Survey Circular, Geological Society of London Special Publication, Engineering Geology) (Williams et al. 1993; Burri et al. 1999; Johnson and Neal 2003; Parise and Gunn 2007; Gutierrez et al. 2008c; Parise et al. 2008) and conference proceedings (Sauro et al. 1991; Beck 2003). Subsidence related to sinkhole activity is the most important hazard in karst landscapes (Beck 2003; Waltham et al. 2005). In many regions, financial losses caused by sinkholes are raising considerably due to the humaninduced increase in the probability of occurrence of sinkholes and the development of hazardous areas (Gutierrez et al. 2008a). Some approaches including, mechanical, hydrogeological and predictive modelling (Salvati and Sasowsky 2002; He et al. 2004), geophysical surveys (Ardau et al. 2007), speleological studies (Klimchouk et al. 2002) and palaeokarst investigations (Gutierrez et al. 2008b) have provided enlightening insights on the processes involved in the subsidence phenomena. Other typical environmental problems in karst terrains are related to water quality and quantity (Drew and Hotzl 1999; Goldscheider and Drew 2007; Ravbar 2007), construction of infrastructures (dams, highways, tunnels) (Milanovic 2002), mining and quarrying (Gunn 2004) and other human activities such as, agriculture, waste disposal or urbanisation. This special issue of Environmental Geology contains a selection of peer-reviewed articles presented at the symposium on ‘‘Natural and Anthropogenic Hazards in Karst Areas’’, held in Vienna, Austria, on 16 April 2007, within the framework of the Natural Hazards Programme of the European Geosciences Union General Assembly. The symposium was co-sponsored by the International Union of Speleology (UIS) and by the International Geographical Union (IGU) Commission of Karst Hydrogeology and Speleogenesis. Out of the 35 contributors to the session, 22 accepted the invitation to submit a full paper and finally, 15 peerreviewed articles have been accepted and included in this special issue. They cover many different geographical areas where the interaction between karst systems and human activities results in significant environmental impacts and hazards: Europe (Austria, Bosnia M. Parise (&) National Research Council, IRPI, Bari, Italy e-mail: m.parise@ba.irpi.cnr.it