Vladimir Popov – Life and Creativity

The article is dedicated to the creative path and the scientific heritage of Vladimir Popov – one of the remarkable scientists for the Bulgarian geography of the last century. The experience during the professional development from a research precision and focused interest in geomorphology, karstology and physical geography. In this respect, original are the researches on the contemporary relief genesis and evolution, karst region and caves in Bulgaria. The karst in Bulgaria occupies an area of 26 170 km2 or 22.7 % of the territory of the country (Popov 1970). It is distributed in carbonate bodies with a different structure, dynamics and spatial relationships. New zoning of karst is being carried out for the Bulgarian territory. It is divided into: plain; marine and transformed marine karst into plain and plain-marine karst; plateau-like karst; mountain and intermountain karst; karst wetlands and gravitation karst, provoked by catastrophic earthquakes. Karst in Bulgaria is characterized by great diversity due to the complex combination of the factors and conditions of its formation (geological, tectonic, geomorphologic, hydrological and hydrogeological, climatic, etc.) and to the geodynamic development. Regardless of the fact that karst is well studied, there are still fundamental problems in karstology that have not been solved as a whole. In 1970 and 1976yy Popov made the first zoning of surface and underground karst in Bulgaria according to the geological base.