Dynamics of the karst system: a review of some recent work in North America.

Comparison of equilibrated waters worldwide reveals the open or closed system states prevailing in their flowpaths to be a highly significant determinant of equilibrium solute concentration. Available runoff is the foremost control of rate of solution in well developed karst terrains. Current understanding of solution kinetics suggests that at the spatial scales that are of interest to most karst researchers, kinetic factors will only be important during the initiation of groundwater flow networks, although some small evolved landforms such as scallops and rillenkarren are kinetically controlled. It is common to extrapolate measured solution rates to long time periods in order to estimate ages of landforms, etc. Case studies from tropical, temperate, and subpolar areas suggest that such extrapolations tend to overestimate rates of relief creation, ie to underestimate ages of landform. -from Author