Since the early 1980s, the Minnesota Geological Survey and Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Minnesota have been mapping karst features and publishing various versions of their results in the form of 1:100,000 scale County Geologic Atlases. This work was supported in large part by the Legistlative Commission on Minnesota Resources. In the mid 1990s, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources was assigned responsibility for the hydrogeology portions of the County Atlases and is now responsible for the karst mapping. Dalgleish and Alexander (1984), Alexander and Maki (1988), Witthuhn and Alexander (1995), Green and others (1997), Shade and others (2001), Tipping and others (2001), and Green (2003) published sinkhole distribution maps for Winona, Olmsted, Fillmore Counties, Leroy Township, Pine, Wabasha and Mower Counties respectively. Published Atlases of Washington, Dakota, and the counties of the Twin Cites Metro area contain limited information on sinkhole occurrences.

A karst feature database of Southeastern Minnesota has been developed that allows sinkhole and other karst feature distributions to be displayed and analyzed across existing county boundaries in a GIS environment.. Data tables are stored in a Microsoft ACCESS 2000 DBMS and linked to corresponding ArcView shape files

The karst inventory points were point features such as sinkholes, springs, and stream sinks extracted from the karst feature database of Southeastern Minnesota. Both inventory points and karst feature database are updated on regular basis. This research was supported with funding from the Minnesota Department of Health.