A karst sinkhole in Salaspils on the former Zeltiņi railway track (narrow gauge railway), appeared in the spring of 2021, and initially its depth reached approximately 8 meters. The visible hole above the ground had a diameter of about one meter, but by now it has already quadrupled in size. Geologists have informed us that, after studying and analyzing the local geological structure in this area, the conclusion is that it is unlikely that the current sinkhole will develop further than 10 meters in the next 10-15 years.
According to geologists the words ‘karst sinkhole’ talk about complex dissolving action of water flowing underground, which dissolves and washes away the rocks underground. Voids, caves, labyrinths of passages are created in the underground, until a section of them becomes visible to us as the topsoil collapses. A sinkhall forms when the rocks above the voids can no longer bear their own gravity and some of them fall into the voids underground, becoming the surface or landform that shows us that there have been bigger or smaller voids underground.
