Ubiquitous karst hydrological control on speleothem oxygen isotope variability in a global study
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Date
2022-02-15
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Springer Nature
Abstract
Speleothem oxygen isotopic (δ18O) records are used to reconstruct past hydroclimate yet records from the same cave do not always replicate. We use a global database of speleothem δ18O to quantify the replicability of records to show that disagreement is common worldwide, occurs across timescales and is unrelated to climate, depth or lithology. Our global analysis demonstrates that within-cave differences in mean speleothem δ18O values are consistent with those of dripwater, supporting a ubiquitous influence of flowpaths. We present a case study of four new stalagmite records from Golgotha Cave, southwest Australia, where the isotopic differences between them are informed by cave monitoring. It is demonstrated that karst hydrology is a major driver of within-cave speleothem and dripwater δ18O variability, primarily due to the influence of fractures on flowpaths. Applying our understanding of water movement through fractures assists in quantitative reconstruction of past climate variability from speleothem δ18O records. © Crown 2022 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
Description
Keywords
Geochemistry, Hydrology, Paleoclimatology, Caves, Isotopes, Australia, Western Australia, Geologic fractures, Water
Citation
Treble, P. C., Baker, A., Abram, N. J., Hellstrom, J. C., Crawford, J., Gagan, M. K., Borsato, A., Griffiths, A. D., Bajo, P., Markowska, M., Priestley, S. C., Hankin, S., & Paterson, D. (2022). Ubiquitous karst hydrological control on speleothem oxygen isotope variability in a global study. Communications Earth & Environment, 3(1), 29. doi:10.1038/s43247-022-00347-3