Smirnov A.I.
Smirnov A.I., 2020. Modern karst sinkholes in the Southern Urals and Cis-Urals (within the borders of the Republic of Bashkortostan). Engineering Geology World, Vol. XV, No. 4, pp. 42–53, https://doi.org/10.25296/1993-5056-2020-15-4-42-53.
Data on modern karst sinkholes of the Southern Urals and the Cis-Urals within the boundaries of the Republic of Bashkortostan for the past 100 years are collected and systematized. It is diagnosed that they occur most frequently in the Southern Cis-Urals — in the karst country of the East European Plain and are associated with the development of sulfate karst in the gypsum of the Irenian horizon of the Kungurian stage of the Lower Permian. The analysis of the karst sinkholes formation with a fixed time of occurrence for the last 20 years (2000–2020) has been made. It is established that more than half of them appeared in the bottoms of the valley-drenches, where the thickness of the deposits covering the karst gypsum is reduced by the erosion activity of the rivers. The general confinement of karst sinkholes to the rear parts of river terraces, the foothills and edges of the modern bedrock slopes of river valleys and slopes of river paleovalleys, that is, to the boundary strips of relief elements, was revealed. At the same time, most of the karst sinkholes are noted in the areas of development of closed (Russian) and overlapped (suballuvial or Kama) types of karst with the maximum volumes of their formation in the conditions of the development of the first. Very often, fresh karst sinkholes were observed in areas within which they have been previously recorded and, in most cases, are confined to territories with an increased prevalence of surface karst forms. The latter indicates that modern karst sinkholes have a character inherited from the karst of Neogene-Quaternary time. In a twenty-year series of observations can be noted a general trend of increasing the number and total volume of karst sinkholes in the last decade.
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ALEXANDER I. SMIRNOV
PhD (Geology and Mineralogy); Senior Research Scientist in the Laboratory of
Hydrogeology and Environmental Geology, Institute of Geology, Ufa Federal
Research Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences; Ufa, Russia