April 22, 2022: Day 4. Kinvarra-Cloonnasee: Burren Nature Sanctuary
An early spring has arrived in Ireland. Wildflowers carpet the meadows and paths, apple blossoms emerge, animals make tunnels through winter’s dry grasses and turloughs have appeared over the winter months.
A turlough (turloch or turlach in Irish), is an intermittent temporary seasonal water body, almost virtually unique to Ireland. They are found mostly in limestone karst areas, west of the river Shannon. A turlough lake or water body is typically wet in the winter and dry in the summer. The fluctuation varies with the area’s groundwater table. When the underground water table level drops, the water drains away through cracks in the karstic limestone. Annually, rainfall and springs and fissures fill the underlying limestone, flooding the above ground turlough area in the winter.
The uniqueness of turloughs is of high interest to geomorphologists, hydrologists, botanists and zoologists .
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Interesting.
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