Limestone pavements

• Limestone pavements are flat areas of exposed limestone rocks.
• They are part of the dissolved bedding plate which may have been exposed because the surface soil may have been removed by glacial activity and never replaced.
• Where the pavement has joints that reach the surface, these joints may be widened by acid rain water.
• This process is called carbonation.
• The widening of the joints leaves deep incisions/gashes/fissures called grikes.
• Some grikes such as found in the Limestone regions of England can be about half a meter wide.
• Separating the grikes are flat-topped yet dissected blocks referred to as clints.
• As time passes these clints are levelled by denudation processes including the widening of the grikes until a lower bedding plane is exposed.
• This bedding plane’s joints are in turn attacked by weathering in the form of carbonation forming grikes and thus repeating the process all over again.
• Grikes can also be formed by subsurface weathering in much the same way as tors are formed.
• Acidic water may seep into the ground into joints in the underlying limestone bedding rock.
• Over time it widens these joints and when the overlying soil is washed away by erosion the clints and grikes are exposed.

A diagram showing clints and grikes.

Clints and Grikes. Image skoool.ie

Grikes are sometimes known as grykes.

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