Abstract
In karst environments, typically characterized by peculiar
hydrogeological features and high heterogeneity and anisotropy, the
connection between the recharge areas and the springs is often not
straightforward. Rapid infiltration underground, and the resulting
network of karst conduits, are frequently at the origin of a lack of
correspondence among topographic divides and underground watersheds. As
a consequence, in many karst areas there is still much work to do to
fully understand the groundwater flow, with the only “underground
truth” often being provided by cave data. In this contribution we start
from general considerations about the difficulty in comprehending
hydrogeology in karst, and use them to analyze one of the most important
karst areas of southern Italy, the Alburni Massif in Campania (Italy).
In detail, we present data about the main karst features at the surface
(dolines, endorheic basins, etc.), the most important cave systems
(reaching maximum depth of about 450 m below the surface), and the main
basal springs coming out at the massif borders. Integration of the
different sources of data allows to hypothesize the main directions of
groundwater flows, and to perform the first attempts in correlating
recharge and discharge data, but such hypothesis then often prove to be
wrong by data from cave and diving explorations.