Hazards in Karst and Managing Water Resources Quality

The peculiarities of karst environment make it highly vulnerable to a number of geohazards: As concerns the natural hazards, the main categories are sinkholes, slope movements, and floods. To these, anthropogenic hazards have to be added, as pollution events, land use changes resulting in loss of karst landscape, destruction of karst landforms, etc. Even carrying out engineering works without taking into the due consideration, the peculiar aspects of karst can be extremely dangerous and cause risk to the natural environment, as well as to the man-made infrastructures and buildings. In the second half of last century, man has definitely become one of the most powerful factors that can cause changes in the karst environment, produce direct damage, predispose the territory to threatening events, and increase with mismanagement actions the negative effects deriving from natural hazards. In this chapter, the main hazards in karst are briefly described with particular focus on the natural hazards and with the help of some case studies.