CREATING A SUSTAINABILITY INDEX FOR KARST ENVIRONMENTS

With growing populations and ever increasing pressure on resources, the recognition to live sustainably with our environment has risen to the forefront of society’s conscientiousness. When considering such anthropogenic pressure, karst landscapes are as vulnerable, if not more so, than any other environment. Such vulnerability arises from the rapid transit times of percolating water, the poor filtering ability of the carbonate bedrock and the highly specialized biota of the subterranean karst. In an effort to measure the sustainable practices of the region in a karst setting, we have created a Karst Sustainability Index. The index uses a credit system for scoring broad categories that include natural resources, agriculture, tourism, building and development, waste management, economic development, equity and environmental justice, energy and green house gas management and finally educational programs. The utility of such an index includes benchmarking the environmental status of karst in a region, to allow comparison of sustainability practices temporally, highlight areas where remedial actions are needed, or simply to compare different regions. Through the study area of Tampa Bay Metropolitan Area, we demonstrate both the application and validation of the KSI.