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A polje, also called karst polje or karst field,Price, V. N. 2011. The Orphaned Land: New Mexico's Environment Since the Manhattan Project. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, p. 167. Weber, Rudolf O. et al. 1997. "20th-Century Changes of Temperature in the Mountain Regions of Central Europe." In Henry F. Diaz et al. (eds.), Climatic Change at High Elevation Sites, pp. 327–344. Dordrecht: Kluwer, p. 329.White, William Blaine, & David C. Culver (eds.). 2012. Encyclopedia of Caves. Waltham, MA: Academic Press, p. 443. is a large flat plain found in karstic geological regions of the world, with areas usually in the range of 5–400 km2 (2–154 sq mi). The name derives from the Slavic languages, where polje literally means 'field', whereas in English polje specifically refers to a karst plain or karst field.
A polje covers the flatbottomed lands of closed basins which may extend over large areas, up to 1,000 km2. The flat floor of a polje may consist of bare limestone, of a nonsoluble formation (as with rolling topography), or of soil. A polje typically shows complex hydrogeological characteristics such as Karst spring, , swallow holes, and Losing stream. In colloquial use, the term "polje" designates flat-bottomed lands which are overgrown or are under cultivation. The Dinaric Alps Karst has many poljes.
They are mostly distributed in subtropical and tropical latitudes but some also appear in temperate or, rarely, boreal regions. Usually covered with thick , called "terra rossa", they are used extensively for agricultural purposes.
Some poljes of the Dinaric Alps are inundated during the rainy winters and spring seasons as masses of water called izvor or vrelo appears at the margins. The water disappears through shafts called ponor.
Prominent karst poljes are Livanjsko polje (about 60 km long and 7 km wide), Glamočko Polje, Bosansko Grahovo, Drvar, Duvno, Kupreška Visoravan (Kupres Highlands), Popovo Polje, Dabarsko Polje, Nevesinje and Gacko in Bosnia and Herzegovina; Logatec Polje, Planina Polje, and Cerknica Polje in Slovenia; Grahovsko Polje and Nikšićko Polje in Montenegro; Ličko Polje and Krbava in Lika, Croatia; Begovo Pole in North Macedonia and Odorovsko polje.
In Portugal, the town of Minde is located in a landscape of intensive karst. In the summer the polje is fertile fields, in winter, in case of heavy rain, a temporary lake.
The former Lake Copais in Boeotia, Greece, fed subterranean channels (some artificial) until a 1957 land reclamation project drained it completely.
Etymology
In its original languages, the word is synonymous with interior valley. The word polje () itself is of Slavic language origin (best known as the root for the country Poland, Polska, from the Polish language word pole 'field'). English borrowed polje from Slovene language"Glossary of Cave and Karst Terms" (letter "P"), Speliogenesis.info, 2009, webpage: Spelio-gloss-P. or Serbo-Croatian (, ). The equivalent in neighbouring Macedonian and Bulgarian is pole (поле), and in Russian language it is polye (поле). As a borrowing, apart from English it can be found in a number of languages including: French language, German language, Greek language, Italian language, Spanish language and Turkish language (which uses polye).
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