Sub-Surface Features
The most common examples of subsurface features in a limestone landscape are caves. In the Yorkshire Dales, there are numerous caves, three of which - Ingleborough Cave, White Scar Caves and Stump Cross Caverns - are now show caves for the public.
The caves themselves and their associated formations vary greatly in size, but they all depend on the process of carbonation for their creation. Carbonation is a reversible process: it results in the redeposition of calcite, and the development of stalagmites, stalactites, straw stalactites, helictites, pillars and flowstone. the rate of growth of these formations is about 1 cm per 200 years - it is therefore an extremely slow process. Some stalactites may be millions of years old.
Read more about this topic: Carboniferous Limestone
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)