Parris Lyew-Ayee, Jr.
School of Geography & the Environment
University of Oxford
Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TB, UK
Tel: +44 1865 271919

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have emerged as a powerful tool for the morphometric analysis of karst terrain.  GIS involves a collection of hardware, software and geographic data whereby all forms of geographically-referenced information can be captured, stored, updated, manipulated and analyzed.  The correlation of multiple datasets is easily facilitated in GIS as well.  The technology has been applied in many fields, ranging from geology and the environmental sciences to urban and regional planning.  Used imaginatively, the capabilities of GIS extend far beyond a simple cartographic tool, as many assume GIS to be.  In fact, GIS can be a very useful, powerful and cost-effective tool for analysis and modelling of a wide variety of data.

There is a need to quantitatively describe karst landscapes and the processes that act on karst.  Evans (1990) and Jarvis and Clifford (1990) described general and specific forms of geomorphometric measurement, respectively.  General geomorphometry looks at the entire landscape and does not consider individual landforms;  specific geomorphometry looks at the pattern, planar form, and shape of individual features of the landscape.  Using applied GIS techniques, both analyses can be carried out, gleaning an immense amount of information for further analysis.  Trend surface analyses, semivariogram estimation and optimal kriging interpolation, determination of local relief, volume calculations, slope and aspect derivations, three-dimensional analyses, and summit/sink identification are a few of the GIS techniques available for the study of karst terrain.  Ultimately, it is hoped that a classification scheme can be developed for unambiguously identifying karst terrain using GIS.