Maintaining a safe water supply is particularly crucial for karst islands such as Barbados. In order to take proper measures to prevent and reduce saltwater intrusion and to safely extract the right fraction of recharge, karst characteristics must first be fully understood. Geomorphologic investigations of karst surface features of the Porters & Trents groundwater catchments (Barbados) employed GIS technologies to explore the development and distribution of sinkhole features. Contour-based digital elevation models, surface geology, lithology, and remote sensing images were incorporated in this investigation. Seventy-six sinkholes were investigated and occupied approximately 1% (0.16 km2) of the total area (16.41 km2) under study. It was found that age of karstification is not related to age of a terrace. The middle terrace was the one found to be most karstified. Yet, degree of karstification within a terrace is age related. Also, cluster density increases with age of coral within the middle terrace. Density of sinkholes within a cluster also increases with age of coral within the middle terrace. / Finally, this study shows that sinkhole long axis, cluster elongation direction, sinkhole alignment and karst lineament all have a tendency to a northeast alignment. This supports the idea that underlying coral rock fracture and conduits have a northeast orientation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.101144 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Huang, Hsin-Hui, 1976- |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Bioresource Engineering.) |
| Rights | © Hsin-Hui Huang, 2007 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002597121, proquestno: AAIMR32723, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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