Karst landscapes—regions characterized by sinkholes, caves, springs, underground rivers, and slowly dissolving bedrock— constitute about 25% of the world’s land surface (1). Although some karst landscapes are attractive and of aesthetic value, most of them are recognized as fragile zones unsuitable as human habitats— mainly due to extremely poor soil cover, or a complete lack of soil, and rapid...

Karst ecosystems are fragile and are in many regions degraded by anthropogenic activities. Current management of degraded karst areas focuses on aboveground vegetation succession or recovery and aims at establishing a forest ecosystem. Whether progressive succession of vegetation in karst areas is accompanied by establishment of soil biota is poorly understood. In the present study, soil microb...

BACKGROUND Information on the use of medicinal plants in Karst and Gorjanci is not available in the literature, but collection of plants is still an important and widespread practice in these regions. Karst and Gorjanci are two remote regions in Slovenia that are only 120 km apart but have different climates; one region is close to the Italian border, and the other is near the Croatian border. ...

As band widths are narrow and range of spectra is wide, subtle differences in spectral features can be extracted and used for mapping physical and chemical properties of bare substrate with imaging spectroscopy. However, the use of spectral characteristics of substrates is not accessible if substrate was covered by vegetation. In this study, we explored the feasibility of extracting karst ecoen...

Karst landscape overview THE 52,830 ACRES OF MAMMOTH CAVE NATIONAL PARK are part of the South-Central Kentucky Karst, which is characterized by subterranean drainage to springs on major rivers. From the southeast to the northwest portion of the landscape (Figure 1), there is a gradient of decreasing maturity in karst development, which corresponds to the regional dip of the bedrock. The major c...

Enhanced monsoon duration and soil acidification from acid rain are expected to impact the distribution of microbial communities in surface and subsurface environments, although these impacts are poorly understood for most systems. In central China, soluble carbonate bedrock forms extensive karst landscapes. Current predictions are that the amount of monsoonal precipitation and acid rainfall in...

The Indonesian province of East Kalimantan is home to some of the largest remaining contiguous tracts of lowland Dipterocarp forest on the island of Borneo. Nest surveys recently conducted in these forests indicated the presence of a substantial population of Eastern Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus morio) in the Berau and East Kutai regencies in the northern half of the province. The Sangkul...

Karst ecosystems are important landscape types that cover about 12% of the world's land area. The role of karst ecosystems in the global carbon cycle remains unclear, due to the lack of an appropriate method for determining the thickness of the solum, a representative sampling of the soil and data of organic carbon stocks at the ecosystem level. The karst region in southwestern China is the lar...

vulnerability and contamination risk assessment is of great importance in karst aquifer management. because of vastness of karst in zagros, natural conditions and human activity within the region of aquifer, pollution emission has become one of the most important challenges in front of zagros aquifers. the purpose of this study is to assess marab aquifer vulnerability, using riske model and, de...