Editing Karst (section)

== Early studies ==
[[File:Causse de Sauveterre doline.jpg|thumb|[[Doline]] in the [[causses|causse]] de Sauveterre, [[Lozère|Lozère, France]]]]
[[Johann Weikhard von Valvasor]], a pioneer of the study of karst in [[Slovenia]] and a fellow of the [[Royal Society]], London, introduced the word ''karst'' to European scholars in 1689 to describe the phenomenon of underground flows of rivers in his account of [[Lake Cerknica]].<ref>Paul Larsen, ''Scientific accounts of a vanishing lake: Janez Valvasor, Lake Cerknica and the New Philosophy'', 2003.</ref>

[[Jovan Cvijić]] greatly advanced the knowledge of karst regions to the point where he became known as the "father of karst geomorphology". Primarily discussing the karst regions of the Balkans, Cvijić's 1893 publication ''Das Karstphänomen'' describes landforms such as karren, [[doline]]s and [[polje]]s.<ref name="Derek2007">{{cite journal |last1=Ford |first1=Derek |date=2007 |title=Jovan Cvijić and the founding of karst geomorphology |journal=Environmental Geology |volume=51 |issue= 5|pages=675–684 |doi=10.1007/s00254-006-0379-x|s2cid=129378021 }}</ref> In a 1918 publication, Cvijić proposed a [[cycle of erosion|cyclical model]] for karst landscape development.<ref name="Derek2007" /><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cvijić |first1=Jovan |date=1918 |title=Hydrographie souterraine et évolution morphologique du Karst |journal=Recueil des travaux de l'institut de géographie alpine |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=375–426 |doi= 10.3406/rga.1918.4727|language=fr}}</ref>

Karst [[hydrology]] emerged as a discipline in the late 1950s and the early 1960s in France. Previously, the activities of cave explorers, called [[speleologist]]s, had been dismissed as more of a sport than a science and so the underground [[Solutional cave|karst caves]] and their associated watercourses were, from a scientific perspective, understudied.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gilli |first1=Éric |last2=Mangan |first2=Christian |last3=Mudry |first3=Jacques |translator-last=Fandel |translator-first=Choél |date=2012 |title=Hydrogeology: Objectives, Methods, Applications |publisher=CRC Press |page=7 }}</ref>