“Risk of Subsidence due to Evaporite Solution” (ROSES) - Introduction to a Special Issue of Environmental Geology

Abstract

This Special Issue showcases a European research project, which sought to develop tools to predict and manage severe, localized land subsidence in areas underlain by karstified gypsum. ROSES (Risk of Subsidence due to Evaporite Solution) was a major R&D Project of the European Commission’s 4th Framework Programme of Research and Technological Development (project number ENV4-CT97-0603, 1998 to 2001). As in all such European projects, the research was undertaken collaboratively by a consortium of international partners, each of whom brought a specialist skillset to the team: University of Newcastle, UK (Coordinator): applied hydrogeology, geotechnical engineering, subsidence engineering. National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine: Speleology, gypsum dissolution kinetics, karst hydrogeology. Eberhard-Karls Universitat Tubingen, Germany: mathematical modelling of groundwater flow and dissolution in karst terrains. Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain: geomorphology. British Geological Survey, UK: Hazard mapping of gypsum karst terrains, applied geophysics. The ROSES team applied a systematic concept of speleogenesis in gypsum as the basis of all of its work. Fundamental to our approach was recognition of the centrality of hydrogeological evolution in determining the present ‘‘hazard status’’ of a given locality: when we map different manifestations of gypsum karst in different places, we are really seeing ‘‘snap-shots’’ in geological time of the successive stages in karst evolution. Notwithstanding local peculiarities, from the global perspective we can begin to recognise that the major boundary conditions, which drive karst development change between these successive stages in a more-or-less predictable manner. Consequently, the classification of specific karst terrains using a well-informed speleogenetic perspective provides a helpful framework for the identification of the factors that give rise to karst subsidence phenomena. The founding speleological perspective upon which ROSES successfully built was provided by Alexander Klimchouk (National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine). Truly the project ‘‘guru’’, Alex was responsible for erecting the conceptual speleogenetic/hydrogeological framework (Klimchouk this volume), which provided the intellectual starting-point for all other activities in the project. One of the most fruitful avenues of research within ROSES was the development of the computer code ‘EVE’ (Birk et al., this volume) which for the first time allowed simulation of the processes of maze-cave development in realistic settings. Creative interactions between this novel modelling work and field characterisation of gypsum dissolution rates Environ Geol (2005) 48: 285–286 DOI 10.1007/s00254-005-1274-6 EDITORIAL