Project number: YS-18-096

Project title: Karst Map of Grorgia (scale: 1:500 000)

Funding organization: Shota Rustaveli national Science Foundation of Georgia

Start and end dates: 22.12.2018-22.12.2020

Principal investigator: Lasha Asanidze

Key personnel: Lasha Asanidze

Project Summary: Georgia is one of the distinguished countries in the world with the diversity of karst landscape. The karst rocks (easily soluble rocks in the water-mainly limestone) occupy an important area of the entire territory of our country, where the world's deepest cave-abysses are emerged. At present, the world record of deep penetration is recorded in Georgia (the Veryovkina Abyss), which is -2204 m. In Georgia, the study of the karst landscape is started in the 50s of the last century, when in the Institute of Geography was created the Laboratory of Karstology and Speleology, and still TSU Institute of Geography is the only scientific research center in Georgia, where there is a great experience in karst research and the specialists of the relevant field are working. The presented project innovation is the fact that similar kind of complex karst-speleological surveys have not been implemented in Georgia yet. Therefore, it is very important to conduct research that will give us a clearer picture of the scales of distribution of karst processes in Georgia. Respectively, the scientific results are important both in theoretical and practical terms.

Achieved results: The Karst map of Georgia is prepared from many years of field and literature research. On the Map, we distinguish two types of karst features: 1). karst - developed in carbonate rocks; 2). Pseudokarst - developed in clays, clays and sandstones, and volcanic rocks, and also five subtypes: limestones and dolostones, and conglomerates and sandstones in carbonate rocks; clays, clays and sandstones with gypsum content, and volcanic rocks as pseudokarst, mainly based on their lithology.