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Articles

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Reverse pseudo-gours: a new sub-type of folia observed in the Nerja Cave (SE Spain)
Cristina Liñán Baena, Concepción Jiménez de Cisneros, Yolanda Del Rosal, and Paolo Forti

A new sub-type of folia has been described

Their genesis and evolution occur just at the air-water interface

Feeding water supersaturation degree extremely low

Slow and progressive lowering of the water level

Genesis: precipitation of minerals by rapid degassing of CO2 from water and/or evaporation.

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Climate monitoring in the Caumont cave and quarry system (northern France) reveal near oxygen isotopic equilibrium conditions for carbonate deposition
Ingrid Bejarano-Arias, Carole Nehme, Sebastian Breitenbach, Hanno Meyer, Sevasti Modestou, and Damase Mouralis

  • We monitored air temperature, dripwater stable isotopes and modern carbonate, deposited on glass plates at Caumont
  • Dripwater δ18O values reflect thorough mixing in the epikarst and some bias towards the winter season
  • Modern calcite δ13C indicate that prior carbonate precipitation might occur during summer
  • Modern carbonate deposition analysis showed the isotope system is at/very near isotope equilibrium
  • Our results show that Caumont cave is suitable for the study of climate trends in the past

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Subaqueous carbonate speleothems as paleotemperature archives – clumped isotope thermometry and stable isotope compositions of inclusion-hosted water
Attila Demeny, Ágnes Berentés, László Rinyu, Ivett Kovács, Gergely Surányi, and Magdolna Virág

  • Subaqueous speleothems yield reliable clumped isotope temperatures
  • Calcite-water oxygen isotope thermometry seems to work for subaqueous speleothems

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Rates of diagenesis of tropical insectivorous bat guano accumulations: implications for potential paleoenvironmental reconstruction
Donald A. McFarlane and Joyce Lundberg

  • In tropical, wet guano, maximum acidity, temperature, and k values occur at depths of ~10-30 cm
  • Guano moisture level is the most significant control on k
  • Guano k values can have an enormous range – from 0.01 in wet tropical caves, down to 3 x 10-6 in extremely dry caves
  • SEM studies demonstrate that 3 kyr old guano in extremely dry conditions is essentially unaltered
  • Chitin survival under favorable conditions can thus be extrapolated to timescales of 105 years

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Dispersion of artificial tracers in ventilated caves
Claudio Pastore, Eric Weber, Frédéric Doumenc, Pierre-Yves Jeannin, and Marc Lütscher

  • Artificial CO2 was injected in ventilated karst conduits (caves and mines), to assess the airflow
  • Geometrical conduit parameters, air velocity, and tracer dispersion were also carried out
  • The 1-D advection-dispersion model was compared with measured breakthrough curves
  • The theory of dispersion is also compared with dipersion inferred from field data
  • BTC tailing may stem from dead-flow zones that enhance aerosol deposition

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Monitoring air fluxes in caves using digital flow metres
Claudio Pastore, Amir Sedaghatkish, Eric Weber, Nicolas Schmid, Pierre-Yves Jeannin, and Marc Luetscher

  • Low-cost and lightweight digital flowmeter tested for the automated monitoring of air fluxes in caves
  • Numerical modelling reveals inhomogeneous velocity distribution in a cave passage
  • Recommendation for the positionning of instruments in air streamlines

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