World Geo Blog

Final Geography Blog

As we have been learning thus far, Thailand is home to some amazing landscapes including world famous beaches, beautiful jungles, and other various forms of geography. Something that we have not covered yet, but must, are some of the rock landforms that are in Thailand. Many of the coastal areas, especially in the south around Phuket have karst and limestone formations along them. They have even been featured in American films like ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ and ‘The Beach’. The karsts here were formed hundreds of years ago when eventually limestone from calcium carbonate and coral deposits were forced up from subcontinental collision. Thailand happens to be home to some of the world’s most amazing karst formations because of its heavy rainfall. Limestone is actually 1/5^th of the earth’s surface, but it becomes more and more bizarre looking as rainwater shapes it over time.

Thailand is also pretty well known for some of its caves as well. The karst makes for spectacular cavernous developments and in turn wonderful homes for bats and other life. Many of the caves in Thailand are known as dissolution caves that are made from dissolving limestone and can be very delicate. Rainwater helps with the dissolution and with other forms. It travels down cracks in the limestone, and as the rainwater keeps trickling down into the caves interior, it helps make some of the caves stalactites. This process of rainfall shaping the karst around Thailand is called percolation. It happens when particles dissolve from the water and travel through the rock.

The karst formations are also very special due to another reason. They are home to a number of species and a large number of biodiversity. Currently, researchers are saying that 31 karst living species in Southeast Asia are in danger, but that is a conservative and the actual number could be much higher. The reason for the danger is karst mining. People are mining for karst for manufacturing purposes, like producing cement and marble, and the mining is also predicted to keep increasing, and is currently growing by a rate of 5.7 percent a year. According to a National Geographic article, this mining is going to lead to a bleak outlook in the future of karst and its biodiversity in Southeast Asia and Thailand. Right now, only 13 percent of Southeast Asia has protected karst areas.

Another issue that may be facing Thailand in the future is one affected by climate change. Projections for Thailand predict that they will face an increasing amount of extreme weather events. The flood plains of Chao Phraya River are what worries researchers most, being that it is already prone to flooding and is also an urban area. This might not only affect the infrastructure of Thailand, but also their economy. Thailand supplies about 30 percent of the world’s rice, and excess flooding can easily put that at risk.

For the future of Thailand, its geography, and amazing landscapes we can only hope for the same thing that we hope for anywhere in the world. We need to be smart as humans and respect the land, and we need to be smart about our resources and where we get them. Hopefully people in Southeast Asia and Thailand are thinking about this far in advance, and we can continue to enjoy Thailand.