Progress and prospects of research on microhabitat scale characterization and utilization in Chinese karst area

Karst landforms cover approximately 15% of the global land area and are distributed across multiple regions, including the Dinaric Alps in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the French Massif Central, the Ural Mountains in Russia, southern Australia, the mid-eastern United States, the Greater Antilles, north-central Vietnam, and southwestern China (Goldscheider et al. 2020; Lipar et al. 2024). Among these, the karst area in Southwest China is the world’s largest and most continuous expanse of its kind. It features typical karst landscapes, characterized by peak clusters and pinnacles, earning it the reputation as a natural karst museum (Zou et al. 2025). (Zou et al. 2025). Long-term dissolution and deposition processes have not only shaped the geochemical cycling of carbonate rocks but also created diverse surface and subsurface landscapes (Ford and Williams, 2007), making this region an ideal system for studying subsurface–surface material transport and carbon sink dynamics (Zeng et al. 2025). In this context, karst microhabitats defined as natural units influenced by soil depth, light availability, slope position, and other micro-environmental factors (Gao, 2023), serve dual ecological roles as both cradles of life and species refugia (Bátori et al. 2023). They constitute the structural and functional foundation of regional ecosystems. Nevertheless, microhabitats exhibit considerable spatial heterogeneity, and their formation mechanisms, resource distribution patterns, and ecological functions remain poorly understood in a systematic framework.This study conducts a systematic literature review based on publications from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and Web of Science (WOS) databases, with a focus on karst microhabitats in China. The objectives are to synthesize domestic research progress and compare it with international studies to enhance the understanding of microhabitats.