Author(s)

Zaza Lezhava¹, Kukuri Tsikarishvili¹, Lasha Asanidze¹, Nino Chikhradze², Giorgi Chartolani¹, Ani Sherozia¹

¹Vakhushti Bagrationi Institute of Geography, TSU, Tbilisi, Georgia.
²School of Natural Sciences and Engineering, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia.

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.

Karst, Cave, Plateau, Zemo Imereti, Georgia

Lezhava, Z. , Tsikarishvili, K. , Asanidze, L. , Chikhradze, N. , Chartolani, G. and Sherozia, A. (2019) Karst Relief Development History of Zemo Imereti Plateau, Georgia, Caucasus. Open Journal of Geology, 9, 201-212. doi: 10.4236/ojg.2019.93014.