Challenges to Sustainability in the Caribbean Karst

Abstract

There is considerable heterogeneity, but the Caribbean contains many "classic" karst landscapes, including cockpits, towers, dry valleys, dolines (sinkholes), blue holes and caves. The karst has played an important role in Caribbean history, as a focus of resistance to colonial power, and as a basis for subsistence agriculture following emancipation and independence, increasingly incorporating commercial agriculture, urbanization and industrial activities, and tourism. Karst landscape provides a critical physical backdrop for many of the Caribbean's environmental, agricultural, economic and cultural issues, and its sustainability is critical to regional wellbeing. The Caribbean karstlands are challenging to human habitation, since they possess a broad array of natural hazards, such as drought and fl ooding, but they are also inherently fragile, at risk of degradation and vulnerable to environmental change. Despite this vulnerability to environmental change, under rational management regimes there is no inherent reason why human use should not be sustainable in the long term. Human impacts, however, have been longterm and severe, particularly through destruction of natural vegetation, contamination of water supplies, urbanization and quarrying. The Caribbean karst continues to play important roles locally, nationally and regionally in water supply, mining and quarrying, agriculture, tourism and conservation, all of which represent specifi c and collective challenges to sustainability of the karst environment. Additionally, sustainability is threatened by the consequences of anthropogenic climatic change, which is predicted to lead to increasing air and water temperatures, rising sea levels and changing weather patterns, including decreasing precipitation totals, and the increasing frequency of extreme events, such as droughts and hurricanes, the effects of all of which will be magnifi ed in the karst, particularly with respect to karst hydrology. Disruption of the karst hydrological cycle may lead to increasing aridity and desertifi cation, with concomitant impacts on ecology and potential land use. Increasing population and economic development will further exacerbate human impacts on the karst landscapes. Climate change and other human impacts will increasingly threaten already at-risk and vulnerable ecosystems and human communities, necessitating integration of climate change parameters and the adoption of appropriate risk management measures. The severity of these impacts may be reduced by appropriate land management and land use planning, which are necessary ingredients for long-term sustainability.

Ecotourism in the State Forest Karst of Puerto Rico

“…The forests are afflicted by barely adequate financial and personnel resources, but they nevertheless manage to fulfill important roles both in karst landscape conservation and ecotourism. Again, a paucity of parallel studies makes it difficult to compare this situation to that in other regional karst areas, but there are certainly parallels with protected and recreational karst areas in Belize (Bundschuh et al, 2007) and elsewhere in the Caribbean (Day, 2010b(Day, , 2011.…”

Part 1: Contemporary Challenges and Current Solutions in Sinkhole Occurrence and Mitigation

“…These erosional features appear alongside gullies and swallow holes in the Hungarian Karst Mountains [6]. They appear in karst regions experiencing drought and floods [7] and are affected by drastic changes in rainfall, such as torrential rains in southern China [8]. In Florida, the distribution of new sinkholes differs from existing ones; there are processes acting today that are different from in the past [9].…”

“…Apulia, SE Italy [22] Beside natural forces, there are also human activities that are affecting the formation of sinkholes. Human impacts in the Caribbean, for instance, include destruction of natural vegetation; contamination of water supplies; urbanization; quarrying; and so on [7]. So that biotic and abiotic elements are involved [6].…”

“…Planned development, for instance "safe development" using subsidence-proof designs and the role of "preventive planning" have been deployed as longer term responses to the challenges [14,38]. Long-term sustainability has also been advocated, as for instance [7,19]. Finally, there is a role of geomorphological methods, such as sinkhole susceptibility mapping; cross-temporal geomorphological mapping; spatial-temporal predictions; GIS; DEMs; air photo interpretation and borehole drilling; archival research, etc.…”

Bird responses to habitat change in the karst area of Bantimurung Bulusaraung National Park

“…Beynen, 2011), yang menyebabkan perubahan dan kerusakan pada karst (Clements et al, 2008;Day, 2010a;Day 2010b;Fleury, 2011). Jika telah rusak, maka ekosistem karst tergolong sangat sulit untuk dapat dipulihkan kembali (Shu et al, 2013).…”