Jewel Cave Margaret River, Western Australia. Photos by Beth Duschatko. An amazingly beautiful example of this is the formation of caves. There are many different types of caves in the world such as lava, sea and glacier caves. This page will be covering the discussion of solution caves and specifically, Kartchner Caverns.
Limestone is a type of carbonate rock that is conducive to cave formation.
The chemical makeup of carbonate rocks makes them very susceptible to weathering and erosion. It takes little more than slightly acidic groundwater to subject limestone to dissolution . To understand dissolution it is important to have a general understanding of the chemistry of limestone. One of the main mineral components of limestone is calcite, which is made up of calcium and carbonate and is written as CaCO3. This solution is acidic enough to dissolve the calcite in limestone.