Speleothem Science E-Book

Ian J. Fairchild

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Serie: Blackwell Quaternary Geoscience Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1031

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Speleothems (mineral deposits that formed in caves) are currently giving us some of the most exciting insights into environments and climates during the Pleistocene ice ages and the subsequent Holocene rise of civilizations. The book applies system science to Quaternary environments in a new and rigorous way and gives holistic explanations the relations between the properties of speleothems and the climatic and cave setting in which they are found. It is designed as the ideal companion to someone embarking on speleothem research and, since the underlying science is very broad, it will also be invaluable to a wide variety of others. Students and professional scientists interested in carbonate rocks, karst hydrogeology, climatology, aqueous geochemistry, carbonate geochemistry and the calibration of climatic proxies will find up-to-date reviews of these topics here. The book will also be valuable to Quaternary scientists who, up to now, have lacked a thorough overview of these important archives. Additional resources for this book can be found at: href="http://www.wiley.com/go/fairchild/speleothem">www.wiley.com/go/fairchild/speleothem.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Preface

Acknowledgements

I: Scientific and geological context

CHAPTER 1: Introduction to speleothems and systems

1.1 What is all the fuss about?

1.2 How is this book organized?

1.3 Concepts and approaches of system science

1.4 The speleothem factory within the karst system

CHAPTER 2: Carbonate and karst cave geology

2.1 Carbonates in the Earth system over geological time

2.2 Lithologies of carbonate host rocks

2.3 Carbonate diagenesis and eogenetic karst

2.4 Speleogenesis in mesogenetic and telogenetic karst (with contributions from John Gunn and David J Lowe)

2.5 Cave infilling

2.6 Conclusion

CHAPTER 3: Surface environments: climate, soil and vegetation

3.1 The modern climate system

3.2 Water isotopes in the atmosphere

3.3 Soils of karst regions

3.4 Vegetation of karst regions

3.5 Synthesis: inputs to the incubator

II: Transfer processes in karst

CHAPTER 4: The speleothem incubator

4.1 Introduction to speleophysiology

4.2 Physical parameters and fluid behaviour

4.3 Water movement

4.4 Air circulation

4.5 Heat flux (authored by David Domínguez-Villar)

4.6 Synthesis: cave climatologies

CHAPTER 5: Inorganic water chemistry

5.1 Sampling protocols for water chemistry

5.2 The carbonate system

5.3 Weathering, trace elements and isotopes

5.4 Carbon isotopes

5.5 Evolution of cave water chemistry: modelling sources and environmental signals

CHAPTER 6: Biogeochemistry of karstic environments

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Organic macromolecules

6.3 Pollen and spores

6.4 Cave faunal remains

6.5 Synthesis and research gaps

III: Speleothem properties

CHAPTER 7: The architecture of speleothems

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Theoretical models of stalagmite growth and of stalagmite and stalactite shapes

7.3 Geometrical classification of speleothems

7.4 Mineralogy and petrology

7.5 Synthesis

CHAPTER 8: Geochemistry of speleothems

8.1 Analysis and the sources of uncertainty

8.2 The growth interface

8.3 Trace element partitioning

8.4 Oxygen and carbon isotope fractionation

8.5 Evolution of dripwater and speleothem chemistry along water flowlines

8.6 Process models of variability over time

CHAPTER 9: Dating of speleothems

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Dating techniques

9.3 Age–distance models

9.4 Conclusions

IV: Palaeoenvironments

CHAPTER 10: The instrumental era: calibration and validation of proxy-environment relationships

10.1 Available instrumental and derived series

10.2 Methodologies

10.3 Case studies of calibrated speleothem proxies

10.4 Questions raised and future directions

CHAPTER 11: The Holocene epoch: testing the climate and environmental proxies

11.1 A brief overview of the Holocene

11.2 The past millennium

11.3 Holocene environmental changes: speleothem responses

11.4 Questions raised and future directions

CHAPTER 12: The Pleistocene and beyond

12.1 Pleistocene proxy records (ice-age climate fluctuations defined and drawn)

12.2 Insights into pre-Quaternary palaeoenvironments

12.3 Questions raised and looking to the future

APPENDIX 1: Archiving speleothems and speleothem data

References

Index

Color Plates

This edition first published 2012 © 2012 by Ian J. Fairchild, Andy Baker.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fairchild, Ian J. (Ian John)

 Speleothem science : from process to past environments / Ian J. Fairchild and Andy Baker.

p. cm.

 Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-1-4051-9620-8 (cloth)

 ISBN 978-1-4443-6106-3 (epdf)

 ISBN 978-1-4443-6107-0 (epub)

 ISBN 978-1-4443-6108-7 (mobi)

1. Speleothems. 2. Paleoclimatology. I. Baker, Andy, 1968– II. Title.

 GB601.F35 2012

 551.44'7–dc23

2011046018

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Preface

This book is a response to the explosion of interest in speleothem archives of environmental change and our experience of being scientifically stretched to understand the processes that form them. Hence, in this volume we have constructed a broad syllabus, including much new material from our own research and scholarship, as an attempt to match the requirements of a core text for anyone starting research in speleothem science. We also trust that the book will be useful in relation to subjects such as Quaternary science, geochemistry and carbonate geology: for teachers, researchers and students. Quaternary science is multidisciplinary and likewise the science of speleothems draws on many subjects. Chapter 3 summarizes many facets of the global climate system and Chapter 9 focuses on issues in dating, several of which are common to other archives. Chapter 10 provides material on the calibration of proxies which should also be of general interest, while Chapters 11 and 12 draw out the special and often unique contributions made to Quaternary science by speleothem studies. Speleothem formation also illustrates and integrates many fundamental principles of geochemistry. Chapters 2, 6, 7 and 8 provide a complement to the classic marine emphasis of carbonate geology texts and provide exemplars for many core concepts in mineralogy and geochemistry. Students of water chemistry and hydrogeology will find an updated summary of many issues related to carbonate aquifers in Chapters 2, 4 and 5. There is also plenty of material here on general scientific principles, e.g. the emphasis on systems and material transfer, for example in Chapters 1 and 4, that could be effectively used as case examples in undergraduate degrees in physical geography and environmental science. Readers can find the illustrations from this book on-line at the publisher’s website http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html including additional use of colour, and we have also made available on-line on our own website www.speleothemscience.info the spreadsheets that were used to produce many of the new graphics. We would be grateful for readers pointing out errors that can be corrected on-line or in a future reprinting. Finally, we hope that this book will inspire some undergraduates towards the research frontier wherever they may find it in the environmental (geo)sciences.

This volume is a tangible outcome of the lively 6 years that we were co-located at the University of Birmingham. Here, we developed a common understanding of speleothem science while also pursuing our other research agendas. We planned the book in 2008 and both benefitted from periods of study leave in 2009: AB at University College, Durham, while holding an Institute of Advanced Studies Fellowship, and IJF at the University of Newcastle, Australia, financially supported by the Leverhulme Trust. Andy moved on to the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia, in January 2010, and the continuation of the Leverhulme Study Abroad Fellowship allowed IJF to catch up with AB in Sydney’s Northern Beaches in September 2010. Over the past 15 years at Birmingham, Exeter, Newcastle, Keele and UNSW, we have had the pleasure of supervising the work of many fine research students and fellows on speleothem-related work, several of whom are now forging their own research careers. The Natural Environment Research Council, the European Community, the UK’s Royal Society, the Australian Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust have supported our work through several projects. We are grateful to several colleagues with connections to Birmingham who have provided input or specific sections to this book; their contributions are listed in the contents. We salute the generations of speleologists who made so many of the discoveries that provided a foundation for our science, several of whom went on to be professional scientists. AB especially thanks Pete Smart, Larry Edwards, Dominique Genty, John Gunn, Tim Atkinson and Paul Williams for their advice, encouragement and debate. IJF made his underground scientific debut in September 1994 in the company of Silvia Frisia and Andrea Borsato, who have remained good friends and collaborators ever since, as subsequently have been Frank McDermott, Christoph Spötl, Dave Mattey and Pauline Treble, as well as those previously mentioned, and others we should have done. We have found the global speleothem community to be highly supportive and forward-looking, and are grateful for all the insight and scientific inspiration we have found there, including through the Climate Change—the Karst Record meetings, the sixth of which was held in Birmingham in June 2011. We are indebted to Ian Francis for his encouragement and to his colleagues at Wiley-Blackwell for their helpfulness and efficiency in the production process. We also thank the publisher’s three reviewers, Denis Scholz, Maurice Tucker and Ming Tan, and Gregoire Mariethoz and Bryce Kelly for their comments on different parts of our text. We are indebted to Anne Ankcorn and Kevin Burkhill of the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, for their excellent work on drafting many of the figures in this book. Both of us depend on the enthusiasm and support of our wives Sue and Jo. While Sue and Ian simply have a non-aggression pact regarding horses and caves, we have Jo to thank particularly for proof-editing the first drafts of our text. We trust the final version will be well received, although we are only too aware of the shortcomings and biases that books written during short and busy lives bring.

Ian J. Fairchild and Andy Baker

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the copyright holders for permission to reproduce the following material:

Acta Carsologica (Figures 1.2 and 2.32)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (Plate 3.7 (part), 12.1, Figures 11.7, 12.4c)

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (Figure 2.35)

American Chemical Society (Plate 5.1, Figures 5.8, 5.9, 5.16)

American Geophysical Union (Plates 3.6 and 12.2; Figures 3.1, 3.4, 3.7, 3.9, 3.1, 3.12, 3.13, 4.23, 4.35, 11.16, 11.20)

Andrea Dutton (Figure 7.29)

Annual Reviews (Figure 4.31)

Australian Government (Plate 3.2)

British Cave Research Association (Figure 5.3a)

Chaoyong Hu (Plate 3.5, right)

CRC Press (Figures 3.8 and 5.18)

Eligio Vacca (Plate 7.9)

Elsevier-Pergamon (Plates 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 7.6c, 11.2 and 11; Figures 1.1, 1.4 (left), 1.B3, 2.4, 2.5a, 2.6, 2.7, 2.11, 2.14, 2.17, 2.24, 2.28, 2.29a, 4.1b, 4.7, 4.15, 4.16a, 4.16c, 4.16d, 4.19, 4.22, 4.26, 4.29, 5.5, 5.6, 5.10, 5.14, 5.22, 5.23, 6.3, 6.4, 6.B1, 6.B4, 6.B5, 7.1, 7.5b-f, 7.20, 7.21, 7.26, 7.27, 7.28, 7.30, 8.2a, 8.3, 8.6, 8.7a, 8.8, 8.9, 8.12, 8.13, 8.17, 8.18, 8.19, 8.20, 8.23, 8.24, 8.25, 8.26, 9.2, 9.3, 9.5, 9.6, 9.7, 10.10, 11.2, 11.8, 11.9a, 11.10, 11.19, 12.2, 12.4a, b, 12.6, 12.7

European Mineralogical Union and the Mineralogical Society (Figure 5.17)

Fabrizio Antonioli (Plate 7.7)

Geological Association of Canada (Figures 2.19 and 2.20)

Geological Society of America (Figure 2.20, 2.22, 2.25, 3.16a, b, 6.5, 11.9b, c, 12.5)

Geological Society of London (Plate 7.3, Figures 1.5b, 2.1, 5.24)

International Glaciological Society (Figure 5.12)

International Journal of Speleology (Plate 7.5, 8.22, 11.13)

IPCC Report Climate Change 2007 The Physical Science Basis their Figure 7.5 (Figure 1.B1)

Jacqueline Shinker (Plate 3.1)

Journal of Geology (Figure 3.16d)

Jud Partin and PAGES (Figure 11.11)

Karst Waters Institute (Figure 1.10)

Mineralogical Society of America (Figures 5.7 and 8.5)

Ming Tan (Plate 7.6a; Figure 1.2a)

National Speleological Society (Figures 2.26 and 7.2)

Nature publications (Figure 11.15)

Otto de Voogd (Plate 7.1 (right))

Oxford University Press (Figure 2.3)

Paul Williams (Figure 2.2)

Phil Hopley (Figure 12.1)

Royal Society for Chemistry (Figure 6.B2)

Sage Publishers (Plate 7.4)

SEPM (Society for Sedimentary Geology) (Figures 2.16, 2.21, 7.12, 7.13, 7.17, 7.19, 7.22, 7.23)

Springer (Plate 3.7 (part), 2.15, 2.23, 3.B1, 4.32, 7.4b)

Stan Robinson (Plate 7.1 (left))

University of Chicago Press (Figure 3.3)

Verband Österreichischer Höhlenforscher (Figure 7.3)

Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston, Staffordshire (Plate 1.1 insets)

Wiley-Blackwell (Figure 2.5b, c, 2.12, 2.18, 2.27a, 2.33, 2.34, 3.14, 3.15, 3.16c, 3.17, 3.21, 4.13, 4.16b, 4.25, 4.33, 5.11, 7.11b, c, 7.18, 10.6, 11.4, 11.6)