Historical Overview on Karst Research

Abstract

Early civilizations recognized the importance of springwaters generally and of karstic springs in particular. Due to the unique nature of karst, man in karst or limestone terrains perhaps understood this importance better than man in other terrains. In fact, the earliest hydrologic concepts of the hydrologic cycle, water source, occurrence, and quality were developed in relation to karst environments. Among others, Chinese, Arabs, Greeks, and Romans contributed to this early knowledge. It was in the karst aquifers in the high mountains of Greece that the first theories of the origin of springwater were born. Aqueducts as architectural master works were developed and designed by the Romans to enable the long-distance transportation of high-quality waters. At the zenith of the Roman Empire, several aqueducts delivered the incredible amount of around 13 m³/s of water supply mainly tapped at karstic springs to the center of Rome. Xu Xiake (1587–1641) was one of the very important figures of that time traveling and exploring the caves in China. A new scientific discipline, karstology, was born in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Frenchman Edouard Martel is considered the “father of speleology,” but it is the Serbian scientist Jovan Cvijić who, due to his doctoral thesis “Das Karstphänomen” and later works, is often called the “father of karst geomorphology and hydrology.” His research provided systematic treatment of karrens, dolines, karst rivers, karst valleys, poljes, and other types of karst phenomena. During the latter part of the twentieth century, a flood of analyses and information from field surveys and laboratory works resulted in different, sometimes contradictory theories on many aspects of karst hydrogeology.