Slovenský kras

Slovak Karst National Park was established on 1 March 2002 in southern Slovakia, beside the Hungarian border, having been a protected landscape area since 1973. It adjoins the Aggtelek biosphere reserve, in Hungary, and the two form a continuous karst unit.

The landscape takes in practically the whole repertoire of karst phenomena of temperate climates. It is made up of a series of plateaux lying between 400 and 900 metres, ringed by steep slopes dropping towards the surrounding basins, valleys and gorges. Across the 60,000 hectares of the karst area, shared with Hungary, more than seven hundred caves have been recorded.

The vegetation is a succession of Carpathian forests: oak-hornbeam woodland with Carpinus betulus and Quercus petraea, mixed oak woodland, xerothermic oak woodland with cornelian cherry, downy oak and mahaleb cherry, and beech forest with maples and lime. That mosaic answers to the variety of soils, aspects and altitudes of the karst. The Slovak Karst was the country's first biosphere reserve, brought into UNESCO's MAB programme on 1 March 1977, and in 1995 twelve of its seven hundred caves were inscribed on the World Heritage List within the property Caves of Aggtelek Karst and Slovak Karst, shared with Hungary.