Original paper
The character of tropical humid karst
Jennings, J. N.
Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie Volume 16 Issue 3 (1972), p. 336 - 341
12 references
published: Oct 2, 1972
ArtNo. ESP022001603008, Price: 29.00 €
Abstract
J. Corbel’s work has been a great stimulus to karst studies. Though his early death has robbed us of continued debate from him, it would be untrue to the challenging nature of his approach not to venture some qualifications of the broad systematic conclusions drawn from extensive Caribbean field work published recently in this journal (Corbel & Muxart 1970). My experience of karst in Australian New Guinea and in Malaysia is more limited yet it leads me to doubt whether some of their conclusions are of general application. The authors discuss tropical humid karst almost entirely in terms of two karst types which they contrast-cockpit karst and karst “à buttes calcaires isolées” (Kegelkarst). Cockpit karst is described as consisting of plateaus riddled by inosculating, star-shaped dolines and Kegelkarst as comprising alluviated plains from which rise limestone hills in isolation. This dichotomy is confusing because the definitions adopted depart significantly from common usage. Thus it has been generally thought that, though named after its reduction forms-the closed depressions, Jamaican cockpit karst is more distinguishable from temperate karst by its fields of residual hills, whether these accord in height to define a former upland surface or not. In fact cockpit karst has been accepted as one kind of Kegelkarst. The landscapes of isolated residual hills set in alluviated plains generally constitute tower karst, another kind of Kegelkarst; indeed all the line figures of Kegelkarst in Corbel and Muxart (1970) represent the tower karst of common terminology.
Keywords
letter • Briefe • karst studies • Australian • New Guinea • Malaysia