The Lika is a river in Croatia which gives its name to the Lika region. It is 77 kilometres (48 mi) long and it has a basin with an area of 1,014 square kilometres (392 sq mi). Its average discharge at the measurement station in Bilaj (covering 225 km of the basin) is 7.33 m/s, and it can go completely dry.
5-516: It is known as a sinking river because at the end of its course, it flows into a series of ponors or swallow-holes and disappears from the surface. The Lika River rises near the village of Kukljić at the foot of the Velebit Mountains, flows in a northwesterly direction past the town of Gospić , enters and leaves Lake Krušćica , and continues to the northwest until it sinks into the karst topography at ponors near Lipovo Polje. The name
10-641: A karst groundwater system. Steady water erosion may have formed or enlarged the portal in (mainly limestone ) rock, in a conglomerate , or in looser materials. Karst terrains are known for surface water losses through small ponors and its resurgence after having traveled through vast underground systems. Ponors are found worldwide, but only in karst regions. The entire Adriatic watershed within Bosnia and Herzegovina sits on Dinaric karst, with numerous explored and probably many more unexplored ponors and underground flows. There are significant geological ponors in
15-581: Is mostly likely to derive from the Proto-Indo European root *u̯leiku̯- ‘to be(come) moist, to moisten’. This Lika-Senj County geography article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to a river in Croatia is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Ponor A ponor is a natural opening where surface water enters into underground passages; they may be found in karst landscapes where
20-452: The proto-Slavic word *nora , meaning pit , hole . Several places in southeast Europe (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Montenegro, Slovenia) bear the name Ponor due to associated karst openings. Whereas a sinkhole (doline) is a depression of surface topography with a pit or cavity directly underneath, a ponor is kind of a portal where a surface stream or lake flows either partially or completely underground into
25-451: The geology and the geomorphology is typically dominated by porous limestone rock. Ponors can drain stream or lake water continuously or can at times work as springs , similar to estavelles . Morphologically, ponors come in forms of large pits and caves , large fissures and caverns, networks of smaller cracks, and sedimentary, alluvial drains. The name for the karst formation ponor comes from Croatian and Slovene . It derives from
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