|
The first version of the world map of carbonate rocks appeared in Ford & Williams (1989) Karst Geomorphology and Hydrology.
A revision was published in Williams & Ford (2006) Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie Suppl-Vol 147, 1-2, and used in Ford & Williams (2007)
Karst Hydrogeology and Geomorphology (Wiley). This v3.0 revision is in greater detail and attempts to differentiate those areas where
carbonate rocks are relatively pure and continuous from those where they are abundant but discontinuous or impure. It was prepared by Paul
Williams and Yin Ting Fong using a multitude of sources the most important of which are acknowledged in Williams & Ford (2006). The map was assembled using GIS on an Eckert IV equal-area projection.
Most carbonate rocks are susceptible to karstification, although not all are well karstified. Thus the area of carbonate rock
outcrop provides an upper limit on the area of exposed karst terrain. Extensive karstified carbonate rock also exists in subcrop, but is not
mapped here.
World Carbonate Outcrop Areas
 |
| Region |
|
Countries Included |
|
Land Area (km²) |
Maximum Carbonate
Outcrop (km²) |
Percentage |
|
| World |
|
Exclude Antarctica, Greenland and Iceland |
|
133,448,089 |
17,655,024 |
13.2 |
|
| Russia Federation plus |
|
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan |
|
20,649,781 |
3,993,639 |
19.3 |
|
| South America |
|
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru,
South Georgai and the South Sandwich Island, Surinam Uruguay, venezuela |
|
17,792,882 |
370,809 |
2.1 |
|
|
| Africa |
|
Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botwana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros,
Congo, Congo the democractic, Cote D'ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya,
Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Reunion, Rwanda, Sao Tome
and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe |
|
30,001,574 |
3,041,664 |
10.1 |
|
| North America (exclude Greenland) |
|
Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Canada, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica,
Dominica Republic, El Salvador, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamica, Martinique, Mexico, Monsterrat, Nicaragua, Panama,
Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Turks and Caicos Islands, US, Virgin Islands,
Virgin Islands (US) |
|
22,229,293 |
4,076,077 |
18.3 |
|
| East and South East Asia |
|
Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, East Timor, Indonesia (excluding Papua), Japan, Korea
(North and South), Lao, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam |
|
15,638,629 |
1,688,219 |
10.8 |
|
| Middle East and Central Asia |
|
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cyprus, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan,Kuwait, Lebanon, Maldives, Nepal, Oman,
Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen |
|
11,129,677 |
2,554,380 |
23.0 |
|
| Europe (exclude Iceland and Russia) |
|
Albania, Andorra, Austria Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech, Denmark,
Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, isle of Man, Italy, latvia, Liechtenstein, lithuania,
Luxembourg, macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, netherlands, norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, UK, Vatican City, Yugoslavia |
|
6,125,842 |
1,337,635 |
21.8 |
|
| Australasia |
|
American Samoa, Australia, Baker-Howland-Jarvis, Christmas Island, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam,
Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, New Guinea (Papua New Guinea plus Papua), Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuata, Wallis and Futuna Islands, West Iran, Western Samoa. |
|
9,611,377 |
592,601 |
6.2 |
|
|
Download the table as an Excel file  world_carbonate_areas_2010.xls (52.0KB)
Carbonate Extent of Various Regions
This section contains images of carbonate extent of various regions.
Shapefiles
This section contains ArcGIS shapefiles (.shp) of the various regions digitised from source maps. It contains seven different folders that
divide the world into seven separate groups: Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North and Central America, South America and World.
Note that the Asia folder contains two .mxd folders: one is for East Asia and the other is for Central Asia and India.
Similarly, within the Europe folder there are also two .mxd files: one is for Europe (excluding Russia) and the other is for Russia and its neighbouring countries.
A detailed countries definition can be found in the World map inside the World folder.
If the mxd appears blank, the following two methods can be used to solve the problem:
- Right click on the name of the shapefile in ArcMap, Go to Data > Repair Data Source. A new window will pop up. Then navigate to the folders
that you have downloaded, and click on the related shapefiles. Click the Add button.
- Open ArcCatalog, right click on the mxd that you have opened, select Set Data Source(s), In the bottom, there is a list of layers that appears
on the mxd folder. If you click on the most right hand column - select new data source, the directory of the data source can be changed manually by typing in
the correct file directory.
World Heritage Park Shapefiles
A document on cave and karst World Heritage properties has been prepared (July 2008) for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The English language version is available here as a pdf file. The French language version is available from the IUCN.
 caves and karst 2008.pdf (1.21MB).
This section also has the shapefiles that include the karst World Heritage park sites.
Download the world heritage park sites as a shapefile  worldheritage.zip (3KB), or as a PDF file worldheritage.pdf (1.14MB).
World Map
worldmap_WGS1984.shp is a shapefile (in GCS_WGS_1984 projection) that has been obtained from Terraspace (Russian space agency) and includes coastlines and national borders. Coast_World2.shp is a simplified version that preserves only coastlines.
worldmap.zip (9.35MB)
Data sets and maps
Speleothem data sets published in Williams et al. 2004 and Williams et al. 2005 have been up-dated (March 2008) and are available for
downloading:
waitomo_series.xls (109KB)
nw_south_island_series.xls (107KB) |
