Karst and conservation research in Indonesia and its implication to education

Indonesia hosts a vast area of karst landscapes that expand from the island of Sumatra to Papua. Along with the implementation of the World Heritage List and Global Geopark Network, karst environment has become essential topics in Indonesia. By using SCOPUS and Google Scholar database, this paper examined trends of karst research in Indonesia. The result showed that karst related publications have shown to be increasing from 1994 to 2010, and grow more massively after 2010. Also, the publications can be classified into 1) conservation and biodiversity, 2) geophysical studies of karst, 3) environment and resource management, 4) forestry and agriculture, 5) archaeology and prehistoric life, 6) socio-cultural and education aspects. A wide gap occurred in research about conservation strategies at a more comprehensive and integrated scale, such as in a landscape, that takes a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach at achieving sustainability. In terms of environmental education, the use of karst as a natural laboratory remained limited in subjects. Yet, it had excellent potential to be developed as a model for a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to environmental studies, to achieve the goal of Education of Sustainable Development (ESD).