TITLE:
Karst Relief Development History of Zemo Imereti Plateau, Georgia, Caucasus
AUTHORS:
Zaza Lezhava, Kukuri Tsikarishvili, Lasha Asanidze, Nino Chikhradze, Giorgi Chartolani, Ani Sherozia
KEYWORDS:
Karst, Cave, Plateau, Zemo Imereti, Georgia
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Geology,
Vol.9 No.3,
March
26,
2019
ABSTRACT: The history of karst terrestrial development has been restored on the background of many years’ field, experimental and laboratory researches (underground water tracing, structural deciphering of aerophotocytes, analysis of boreholes and geological wounds) and analysis of the current literary sources carried out by us in the Zemo Imereti Plateau. Within the study area, karst and karst forms of the Jurassic-Cretaceous, Lower Tertiary (Paleocene-Eocene) and Post-Miocene (Sarmati) period were revealed. Lithobiostratigraphic analysis of cave subterranean sediments enabled us to identify the cave age. In Zemo Imereti Plateau, in the caves located on higher hypsometric levels, the sedimentation of subterranean sediments began in the Middle-Upper Pleistocene and it seemed that the caves’ formation was mainly completed in the mentioned territory.