Sinkholes, Subsidence and Related Mass Movements

Sinkhole is the most diagnostic feature of karst terrains (Jennings, 1985; White, 1988; Beck, 2005; Ford and Williams, 2007), with the most typical scenarios in karst environments showing sinkholes as their main character: this is for instance the case at the wonderful site of Skocjanske Jame, included in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1986 (Fig. 1). Typically defined in geology textbooks as a circular depression in karst settings, funnel-shaped and with underground drainage (Neuendorf et al., 2005), sinkholes are also described by the term “doline” (As concerns the synonymy between sinkhole and doline, the reader is referred to Sauro (2003) and, more recently, to Parise (2019) when the issue is explained, with reference to several works in the karst literature; this latter having a more descriptive meaning, essentially related to history of karstology in Europe, namely from the Classical Karst area, at the boundary between Italy, Slovenia and Croatia).