Karst hydrology represents a continuously evolving field of research with the scientific community. The unique characteristics of karst systems, in particular the multiple phases involved in flow and transport processes, the various interactions with the land surface, and their heterogeneity at the origin of numerous uncertainties, generate hydrological behaviours that are significantly different from other natural hydrological and hydrogeological systems on earth. Given these peculiarities of karst systems, the community working on karst hydrological phenomena brings together researchers from multiple disciplines, such as hydrologists, hydrogeologists, geologists, mathematicians, physicists and many more. While considerable advances have been made over recent decades to better understand, characterize and forecast the hydrological functioning of karst systems, no attempt has been made to collect these contributions in one journal special issue.
The objective of this special issue is to bring together the work of researchers from various disciplines developing field, modelling and laboratory approaches for the assessment of hydrological and hydrogeological processes and dynamics in karst. The final collection of articles will reflect a status quo in karst research from the point of view of different disciplines that can all be merged under the umbrella of hydrological research.
Contributions are sought that present:
- Hydro(geo)logical methods to investigate the influence of geological structures on flow, evolution of karst features and dissolution processes in karst
- Advances in data analyses to better characterize and understand the hydrological functioning of karst systems
- Modelling and analogue laboratory approaches to investigating flow and transport in karst systems along all-important compartments ranging from surface, over epikarst to vadose and phreatic zones
- Machine learning and other AI techniques as tools for data analyses and hydrological modelling.
