Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
1
Introduction
similarities that different karst terminologies have been used
in different provinces and autonomous regions. A geomor-
phologic regionalization of karst is necessary to promote our
understanding of karst in China and to plan national eco-
nomic development.
According to the karstological regionalization, to set up a
geopark related to karst and caves is more reliable and
comparative.
Geomorphologic regionalization has been carried out
in
China since 1959. Later, provincial
regionalization was
carried out
in several provinces, however,
their geomor-
phologic classi
cation was too simple, but did include karst
landforms. In terms of karst, the geomorphologic regional-
ization mostly recognized four main karst zones by climatic
geographical boundary (DKGI
1979
;Lu
1986
; Yuan et al.
1991
; Zhu
2005
), i.e., humid tropical-subtropical karst
region (I), humid-semihumid subtropical-temperate karst
region (II), arid-semiarid karst region (III) and plateau-high
mountain karst region (IV). The regionalization is of karst
instead of geomorphologic karst, and they contain several
karst landform elements, but more importantly, their
regionalization depends on the difference of karst hydroge-
ology instead of climatically-determined geomorphology.
Carbonate rocks are widespread in China, with an outcrop
area of 910,000 km
2
(Li et al.
1983
; Fig.
1
). Because of
differences in geology, terrain and climate throughout the
country, the karst landforms are more complicated than karst
hydrogeology, and they have so many differences and
2
Regionalization Approach
Genetic and morphological approaches may be used to
classify the typological category of karst geomorphology in
China.
The genetic approach stresses the origin and development
of the karst features, and the processes and conditions
essential to their formation. The lithology may be
rst used
to classify the formations underlying the karst geomor-
phology. At the
cation, they are subdi-
vided into three karst types, namely, the whole karst, the
semikarst and the biokarst
rst level of classi
landforms depending on the
Fig. 1
The geomorphologic regionalization of karsts in China
