Zonal characteristics of China’s Karsts Landform
Eastern China Karsts Landform is in latitudinally striped distribution. Respectively, from the south to the north, it is tropical Karsts Landform, subtropical Karsts Landform and temperate Karsts Landform. Under the limitation of rainfalls and the influences of the landforms, western China is classified into the arid region Karsts (northwestern region) and chilling plateaus Karsts (Tibetan Plateau).

① Tropical Karsts characterize with peaks-depression landform, which locate in Guixi Province, Guangdong Province, Eastern Yunnan Province and Southern Guizhou. The underground caves can be seen everywhere are dissolution vaulted ones. The underground rivers possess many tributaries and wide watershed areas, which is the reason why they are called underground water systems. The average watershed area can be 160 square kilometers. The watershed of the largest underground river in Disu County is 1000 square kilometers. There lie a number of depressions. There are 2.5 depressions per square kilometer in average in peak cluster regions, whose space between each one is about 100-300 meters. Thus, the terrain is split separately so that the peaks-depression landscapes are presented. The slopes of the peaks are sleep, greater than 45 degree usually. The peaks are classified into various types such as single peaks, sparse peaks and peak clusters. Tropical Karsts Landform is characterized with breath-taking peaks and spectacular caves.
The coral reefs of the tropical ocean are the youngest carbonate rocks, mostly formed in Late Pleistocene and Holocene Period. Though the coral reefs are about ten meters higher than the sea level, they build themselves the prodigious caves, bridges, seaside dissolution cliffs, solution grooves and stone buds. Moreover, the coral reefs present the multi-hole coral reef landscapes on the coral islands.

② Subtropical Karsts is represented by hills-depression landscapes (valleys), which can be always found in south of Qinling Mountains and Huai River. Compared with tropical regions, subtropical Karsts conquer more underground rivers while the rivers are shorter and have less watershed areas, less than 60 square kilometers. Besides, they have fewer depressions. There is no more than one depression per square kilometer and it gets fewer and fewer from the south to the north while the ratio of the wadis gets higher and higher. The terrain is not typical while they are mainly characterized with bread-shaped hills whose slopes are about 25 degrees. The quantities of caves here reduce greatly. The majority of the caves here are dissolution fissure caves and the dissolution vaulted caves are more common in south subtropical Karsts.

③ Karsty Wadis are the representatives of temperate Karsts. There are underground caves but most of them are fissure caves whose scales are smaller. Karsts springs are so eye-catching on the grounds that they possess wider watershed areas and larger water flows, for example, Spouting Spring and Niangzi Pass Spring. There lie a few depressions but plenty of valleys. The terrain here is similar to ordinary valleys. However, there are only several remains of the hills-depression landforms and hills-wadi landforms grew in ancient subtropical period on the peaks. The urgently incised rivers constitute valleys, which contributes to the peak landscapes in some regions like the seaside of Juma River.

④ Karsts Landforms are not popular in the arid regions. There are slight traces of corrosions in the limestone fissures. Some of the cracks are filled with calcite so that there are fewer underground dissolution caves, which can be the essential structure of leakage and foundation.

⑤ Chilling plateaus Karsts. Tibetan Plateaus are under the influences of periclacial climate so that the freeze-thaw and weathering are severe. Chilling Plateaus Karsts is distinctive in freeze-thaw stone mound, stone walls and debris slopes in its lower part because of the periclacial coverage. There are a few shallow caves in the hillside and sometimes the depressions can be seen as well.