Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
5.3
2.4
Journals
Geosciences
Special Issues
Application of Speleothems in Paleoclimate and Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction
share announcement

Application of Speleothems in Paleoclimate and Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction

A special issue of Geosciences (ISSN 2076-3263).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2020) | Viewed by 10367

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Ny Riavo Voarintsoa

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Interests: speleothems; conventional isotopes; trace elements; triple oxygen isotopes; clumped isotopes; mineralogy; petrography; paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental reconstruction; intertropical convergence zone; monsoon

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

I am happy to invite you to contribute a paper to an upcoming Special Issue on the "Application of Speleothems in Paleoclimate and Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction".

Description:

Stalagmites are one of the most common types of speleothems, which are secondary carbonate deposits in limestone caves. They have been extensively used to reconstruct climate and environment in the past, during intervals beyond instrumental records. They can be accurately dated using state-of-the-art U-Th techniques and other potential radiometric dating techniques, such as 14C, that are often combined with layer-counting. Geochemical signals stored in stalagmites, such as stable oxygen and carbon isotopes, and major and trace elements, can be highly resolved, yielding high temporal scale resolution records to assess seasonal climate variations in the past with great detail. Physical aspects in stalagmites, such as mineralogy and petrography, have additionally helped refine paleoclimate and paleoenvironment interpretation, making stalagmites one of the most robust geological archives in this discipline.

This Special Issue invites contributions from a broad range of disciplines that use stalagmites to understand how climate has changed in the past. Such applications can be extended to understand landscape evolution and human adaptation to severe climate change. This Special Issue also welcomes new and novel methods that advance the speleothem sciences to understand the present and the past and the future climate. The applications range from understanding the local environment (using monitoring approach) to reconstructing regional climate, and may expand further to global implications.

Submissions can include original research articles or comprehensive reviews relating to the title/description above. Each submission will undergo a formal peer review process, and acceptance or rejection of the submitted article will be evaluated upon reception of the reviews.

Dr. Ny Riavo Voarintsoa
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Geosciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Speleothems 
  • Paleoclimate/Paleoenvironment reconstruction 
  • Conventional stable carbon and oxygen isotope proxies 
  • Non-conventional proxies 
  • Clumped isotopes 
  • Triple oxygen isotopes 
  • Monitoring studies 
  • Regional and global implications

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

13 pages, 4405 KiB  
Article
StalGrowth—A Program to Estimate Speleothem Growth Rates and Seasonal Growth Variations
by Rolf Vieten and Francisco Hernandez
Geosciences 2021, 11(5), 187; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences11050187 - 27 Apr 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2514
Abstract
Speleothems are one of the few archives which allow us to reconstruct the terrestrial paleoclimate and help us to understand the important climate dynamics in inhabited regions of our planet. Their time of growth can be precisely dated by radiometric techniques, but unfortunately [...] Read more.
Speleothems are one of the few archives which allow us to reconstruct the terrestrial paleoclimate and help us to understand the important climate dynamics in inhabited regions of our planet. Their time of growth can be precisely dated by radiometric techniques, but unfortunately seasonal radiometric dating resolution is so far not feasible. Numerous cave environmental monitoring studies show evidence for significant seasonal variations in parameters influencing carbonate deposition (calcium-ion concentration, cave air pCO2, drip rate and temperature). Variations in speleothem deposition rates need to be known in order to correctly decipher the climate signal stored in the speleothem archive. StalGrowth is the first software to quantify growth rates based on cave monitoring results, detect growth seasonality and estimate the seasonal growth bias. It quickly plots the predicted speleothem growth rate together with the influencing cave environmental parameters to identify which parameter(s) cause changes in speleothem growth rate, and it can also identify periods of no growth. This new program has been applied to multiannual cave monitoring studies in Austria, Gibraltar, Puerto Rico and Texas, and it has identified two cases of seasonal varying speleothem growth. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Speleothems in Paleoclimate and Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

26 pages, 5861 KiB  
Article
Climate Variability in Central Europe during the Last 2500 Years Reconstructed from Four High-Resolution Multi-Proxy Speleothem Records
by Sarah Waltgenbach, Dana F. C. Riechelmann, Christoph Spötl, Klaus P. Jochum, Jens Fohlmeister, Andrea Schröder-Ritzrau and Denis Scholz
Geosciences 2021, 11(4), 166; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences11040166 - 6 Apr 2021
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3112
Abstract
The Late Holocene was characterized by several centennial-scale climate oscillations including the Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages Cold Period, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. The detection and investigation of such climate anomalies requires paleoclimate archives with an accurate [...] Read more.
The Late Holocene was characterized by several centennial-scale climate oscillations including the Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages Cold Period, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. The detection and investigation of such climate anomalies requires paleoclimate archives with an accurate chronology as well as a high temporal resolution. Here, we present 230Th/U-dated high-resolution multi-proxy records (δ13C, δ18O and trace elements) for the last 2500 years of four speleothems from Bunker Cave and the Herbstlabyrinth cave system in Germany. The multi-proxy data of all four speleothems show evidence of two warm and two cold phases during the last 2500 years, which coincide with the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, as well as the Dark Ages Cold Period and the Little Ice Age, respectively. During these four cold and warm periods, the δ18O and δ13C records of all four speleothems and the Mg concentration of the speleothems Bu4 (Bunker Cave) and TV1 (Herbstlabyrinth cave system) show common features and are thus interpreted to be related to past climate variability. Comparison with other paleoclimate records suggests a strong influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation at the two caves sites, which is reflected by warm and humid conditions during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, and cold and dry climate during the Dark Ages Cold period and the Little Ice Age. The Mg records of speleothems Bu1 (Bunker Cave) and NG01 (Herbstlabyrinth) as well as the inconsistent patterns of Sr, Ba and P suggests that the processes controlling the abundance of these trace elements are dominated by site-specific effects rather than being related to supra-regional climate variability. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Speleothems in Paleoclimate and Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 2858 KiB  
Article
Characterizing Stalagmites’ Eigenfrequencies by Combining In Situ Vibration Measurements and Finite Element Modeling Based on 3D Scans
by Aurélie Martin, Thomas Lecocq, Klaus-G. Hinzen, Thierry Camelbeeck, Yves Quinif and Nathalie Fagel
Geosciences 2020, 10(10), 418; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences10100418 - 20 Oct 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3570
Abstract
Broken or deformed speleothems have been used as indicators of paleo-earthquakes since the 1990s; however, a causal link is difficult to prove except for some thin speleothems. In contrast, the presence of intact speleothems permits estimating an upper limit of the level of [...] Read more.
Broken or deformed speleothems have been used as indicators of paleo-earthquakes since the 1990s; however, a causal link is difficult to prove except for some thin speleothems. In contrast, the presence of intact speleothems permits estimating an upper limit of the level of horizontal ground motions of past seismicity in the area. The natural frequencies of speleothems are fundamental parameters for their response to earthquakes. This study proposes a new method of in situ characterization of these natural frequencies. Tested in the Han-sur-Lesse cave (Belgian Ardennes), the method is based on recording the ambient seismic noise using three-component sensors on a stalagmite and a 3D laser scan of its shape. The ambient seismic noise records allow a precise determination of the eigenfrequencies of the stalagmite. In addition, numerical models based on the 3D scan show good consistency between measured and modeled data. The joint analysis of these two techniques concludes that the shape of the stalagmite (elliptical cross-section and shape irregularities) influence the eigenfrequencies and polarization of the modes while also causing a near-orthogonal split of natural frequencies. The motions recorded on the stalagmite show significant amplification compared to those recorded at the free surface outside the cave, which has a strong impact on seismic hazard assessment based on speleothems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Speleothems in Paleoclimate and Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction)
►▼ Show Figures

Graphical abstract

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-3
Back to TopTop