Now Available

The Karst Feature Inventory (KFI) is now available to the public as a database and interactive map. It includes features such as sinkholes and sinking streams and is maintained by the Minnesota DNR through weekly updates.

The database and interactive map are available through the DNR web page Springs, Springsheds, and Karst. GIS data is available through the Minnesota Geospatial Commons. State agencies that use the Quick Layers toolbar can also access the KFI using the GIS add-in. The KFI can be used with several DNR companion datasets found on the same web page: Minnesota Regions Prone to Surface Karst Feature Development, Minnesota Spring Inventory, and the Minnesota Groundwater Tracing Database.

The KFI is essential to understanding areas where contaminant transport is high due to interaction between surface and groundwater systems. Karst features are the result of water dissolving bedrock, thereby creating conduits, sinkholes, sinking streams, and caves that can move water rapidly. Rapid water movement makes groundwater in karst areas especially vulnerable to activities on the land surface.

The KFI is used by state and county agencies, consulting firms, researchers, and landowners for resource evaluation and conservation purposes such as assessments for surface and groundwater interaction, contaminant transport, spill response, proposed feedlot and manure lagoon sites, stormwater management, and environmental impact.

The KFI evolved from the former Karst Features Database started in the 1990s by researchers at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota and became a collaborative effort with the DNR. The DNR will maintain the new KFI because the agency is required by statute to identify sensitive areas as part of the groundwater degradation prevention goal (Statute 103H.001) Subdivision 2 of 103H.101 (Protecting Sensitive Areas).