Karst Environments: Problems, Management, Human Impacts, and Sustainability. An introduction to the Special Issue

Karst systems are extremely complex, and due to a number of geological and hydrological characteristics, they can be included among the most fragile and vulnerable environments in the world. Complexity of karst is expressed bythe enormous variations existing indifferent karst regions. The difficulties inherent in such variability were appropriately described by Beck (1999), who wrote, ‘‘Learning to understand the systematics of karst terrain and how to deal with it safely requires serious effort—often a lifetime of study.’’ This means, in other words, that man must make a strong effort to learn to live ‘‘in harmony with’’ karst, rather than to live ‘‘on’’ karst. Many problems we face when interacting with karst environments are best solved through changes in human systems rather than through alterations of karst environments. This is because subtle changes in fragile karst systems change them significantly.