Focusing specifically on the management of karst environments, this volume draws together the world’s leading karst experts to provide a vital source for the study and management of this unique physical setting. Although karst landscapes cover 12% of the Earth’s terrain and provide 25% of the world’s drinking water, the resource management of karst environments has only previously received indirect attention. Through a comprehensive approach, Karst Management focuses on engineering issues associated with surface karst such as quarries, dams, and agriculture, subsurface topics such as the management of groundwater, show caves, cave biota, and geo-archaeology projects. Chapters that focus on karst as an integrated system look at IUCN World Heritage sites, national parks, policy and regulation, measuring systematic disturbance, information management, and public environmental education. The text incorporates the most up-to-date research from leading karst scientists. This volume provides important perspectives for university students, educators, geoengineers, resource managers, and planners who are interested in or work with this unique physical landscape.

First published in 1925 THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK remains the most important source for the study of ancient tracks or leys that criss-cross the British Isles- a fascinating system which was old when the Romans came to Britain. First in the Herefordshire countryside, and later throughout Britain, Alfred Watkins noticed that beacon hills, mounds, earthworks, moats and old churches built on pagan sites seemed to fall in straight lines. His investigation convinced him that Britain was covered with a vast network of straight tracks, aligned with either the sun or the path of a star. Although traces of this network can be found all over the country, the principles behind the ley system remain a mystery. Are they the legacy of a prehistoric scientific knowledge which is now all but lost? And was their purpose secular or religious?