Courtesy: Guatemalan Government
By James Dacey
For me it is the sheer precision that is so astonishing.
This image shows a 60 m “sinkhole” that opened up on Sunday in Guatemala City, a result of the tropical storm Agatha that has been bombarding Central America.
The phenomenon is a common feature of karst landscapes, common in all continents except Antarctica. The bedrock in these zones is usually formed of carbonates such as limestone, which are highly prone to chemical weathering and dissolution. Sinkholes can result when underground cavities can no longer support the overlying sediment, and they can be triggered by even a small amount of rainfall.
The opening of this sinkhole is not reported to have killed anyone, unlike a separate hole in the same area that killed 3 people back in 2007.
