Percent Karst Area by Freshwater Ecoregion

Percent of each freshwater ecoregion’s area containing karst terrain.

We derived the percentage area of ecoregions that may contain karst from the global karst data set by Williams and Ford (2006). The global karst data set was an update of a previous version from Williams and Ford that was released in 2005 by Carbon, Hydrology, and Global Environmental Systems (CHANGES), a collaboration of the International Geoscience Programme (IGCP) and sponsored by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Union of Geological Sciences. We summarized the global karst polygons by calculating the percentage area of ecoregions covered by karst. Total karst area generally reflects the distribution of karst cave systems and thus serves as a proxy of potential cave habitats. This proxy is supported by knowledge that larger cave systems usually indicate higher biodiversity and that karst biodiversity is most abundant in midlatitude temperate regions, as displayed in the map.

These data were derived by The Nature Conservancy, and were displayed in a map published in The Atlas of Global Conservation (Hoekstra et al., University of California Press, 2010). More information at http://nature.org/atlas.

Data derived from:
Williams, P. W., and D. C. Ford. 2006. Global distribution of carbonate rocks. Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie, Suppl. 147: 1–2.

These data were derived by The Nature Conservancy, and were displayed in a map published in The Atlas of Global Conservation (Hoekstra et al., University of California Press, 2010). More information at http://nature.org/atlas.