The Burren: a glacial, karstic and biokarstic expression of a limestone plateau in western Ireland

摘要

The term glaciokarst describes a landscape where both glacial and karstic processes have contributed to geomorphological evolution and has been applied to a range of environments from the high arctic to the alpine Mediterranean. Nevertheless, glaciokarstic environments globally often exhibit significant variation in geomorphological processes and landforms due to these geographical differences. The Burren, County Clare, Republic of Ireland, is often quoted as a quintessential glaciokarstic landscape. However, the Burren and other similar environments would appear to lean towards one end of the glaciokarst spectrum, where solutional and biological processes have been dominant throughout the Holocene, in contrast to ice-dominated glaciokarsts where karstic and biokarstic processes are temperature-limited and cryospheric processes remain the principal geomorphological agents.