Geophysical mapping of solution and collapse sinkholes

Karst rocks such as limestone, dolomite, anhydrite, gypsum, or salt can be dissolved physically by water or chemically by water enriched with carbon dioxide. The dissolution is driven by water flowing through the karst aquifer and either occurs along fractures and bedding partings in telogenetic rocks, or within the primary interconnected pore space in eogenetic rocks. The enlargement of either fractures or pores by dissolution creates a large secondary porosity typical of soluble rocks, which is often very heterogenously distributed and results in preferential flow paths in the sub-surface, with cavities as large-scale end members of the sub-surface voids.Once the sub-surface voids enlarged by dissolution grow to a certain size, the overburden rock can become unstable and voids and caves can collapse. Depending on the type of overburden, the collapse initiated at depth may propagate towards the surface and finally results at the surface as collapse sinkholes and tiangkengs on the very large scale.We present results from geophysical surveys over existing karst structures based on gravimetric, electrical, and geomagnetical methods. We have chosen two types of sinkholes, solution and collapse sinkholes, to capture and compare the geophysical signals resulting from these karst structures. We compare and discuss our geophysical survey results with simplified theoretical models describing the evolution of the karst structure, and we derive three-dimensional structural models of the current situation for the different locations with our numerical tool PREDICTOR.