ABSTRACT
It is axiomatic that groundwater is the primary geomorphic agent in karst terrains. There are other terrains in which groundwater plays a profound role and other agents that act on karst terrains, but the geomorphic effects of groundwater have been most fully and widely studied in the world’s karstlands. However, there is no explanation of landform at the more general level in the sense that known parameters of process rate, structure and time can be combined to yield a parameterized description of void-space distribution in a karst terrain. This chapter presents an illustration of the consistency of karst erosion rates and a discussion of the possible links between them and the various types of landform. While many research directions in karst studies can be distinguished, process studies are rarely at the terrain scale, erosion rate studies rarely address the evolution of landform, and landform studies rarely invoke process explanation in quantitative terms.
