Many Sinkholes Are Caused By The Collapse Of Long Forgotten Underground Workings,

but some like these in Turkey’s Konya Province are caused by drought,

as cultivators increasingly turn to groundwater to keep their crops alive, the giant caverns drained of water eventually collapse under the weight of the soil above, creating holes tens of meters across and up to 150-meters-deep, professor Fetullah Arik, who heads the Sinkhole Research Centre at the Konya Technical University, says that sinkholes are a fairly recent phenomenon observed over the past 10 to 15 years, but that the cause of the problem can be traced back to the 1970s, that is when uncontrolled groundwater irrigation began in the area, droughts are getting worse every year, and getting water by other means is expensive, so farmers still turn to groundwater, thus making the problem worse,

according to Daily Sabbah, these sinkholes are almost exclusive to the Konya Plain, because of the characteristics of the land, streaming direction of water, combined with the recline of underground waters. Some are shallow, while some are much deeper than the eye can see, and despite farmers efforts to fill them up when the appear, that is apparently never a good idea, “Farmers try to come up with solutions too, in filling the sinkholes but in the end, they cannot be filled properly as the void beneath the land is wider than the one visible to the eye. It is better to mark the area with sinkholes to prevent accidents,” Fetullah Arik said, and it is not only Turkey that has a sinkhole problem, in Petrinja, Sisak, and Glina all in Croatia they have a similar problem having sinkholes, but these appear to have been caused by an earthquake, in any event it must be frightening not knowing where the next sinkhole will appear.