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International audience; The historical approach of the karst always gave preferential treatment to the study of the superficial phenomena or underground cavities explored by human. However as demonstrated by hydrogeologists, the main karst development keep out of reach because of the too small sizing of drains or due to its filling. Consequently appears the question about the inception drain, the way used by the water from the sink hole to reach its resurgence. Some authors consider this primary link as obvious when the practice demonstrates clearly that the hydrodynamic continuity results of a very long, complex and selective evolution, essentially geochemical. This is the field of the drain inception stages, that we can spell "prekarst" or "primokarst". Those stages include the successive fields of isalterite and alloterite. This last one opens by compaction a free space and allows a concentrated hydrodynamic flow. These processes, at the origin of the endokarst initiation, can develop on the side of synchronous mechanical dynamics if in the same drain or under a regolith coverage, something divides the bedrock and the quick flow. Without any doubt, this is the purview of the cryptokarst and of the cave walls under filling. We can observe it in the progradation front of the introduction karst or in the retrogradation front of the restitution karst.

International audience