Geology topics
Publications and source records attributed to Watson H. Monroe.
Puerto Rico has a great variety of landforms developed by solution of limestone under tropical climatic conditions. Karst topography is present in most parts of Puerto Rico where limestone crops out, but it is more highly developed in the northern and northwestern parts, which are underlain by thick limestone formations of Oligocene and Miocene age.
The depressions in the cone karst (Kegelkarst) of the area west of Ciales in the Lares Limestone are alined in dry valleys that have dendritic patterns. These valleys apparently record the former existence of a cover of noncalcareous clastic material that was deposited on the limestone in late Tertiary time. One system of dendritic dry valleys ends at an abandoned meander of the Rio Grande de Manati, which is about 60 m above the present floor of the river. Another system leads to large masses of "blanket sand" near the town of Florida. These valleys were apparently eroded during the late Pliocene or very early Pleistocene when sea level was at least 80 m higher than it is today.
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