T134 New Frontiers in Cave and Karst Science

Monday, 23 September 2024
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
212B

UNDERSTANDING CLIMATE TELECONNECTIONS AND THE IMPACT OF FIRE ON SOIL AND DRIP WATER CHEMISTRY THROUGH STALAGMITE RECORDS AND CAVE MONITORING IN NORTHERN WYOMING

Paper number: T134-7
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 2:55 PM – 3:15 PM

Authors

Abstract

The US Rocky Mountains are experiencing warmer temperatures, earlier snowmelt, and increased fire activity with anthropogenic climate change. Paleoclimate records from Rocky Mountain archives such as speleothems can provide context for these changes, illuminating global and regional teleconnections as well as feedbacks between climate, vegetation, and fire during pre-anthropogenic intervals. Here we present results from an ongoing study of Titan Cave, northern Wyoming, where we have been developing Holocene records of precipitation variability and monitoring the modern cave system. As part of our study, we are monitoring the cave site through a novel prescribed burn experiment set to take place in fall 2024. Leading up to the prescribed burn, we are monitoring the soil microbiome, soil and cave gas, and the organic and inorganic chemistry of cave drip waters. Understanding the interplay between soil microbial populations, carbon cycling, and fire and how these would be captured in a stalagmite record will improve our ability to reconstruct past fire activity.

Monitoring of Titan Cave drip waters reveals that the cave responds to interannual variations in rain and snow amounts rather than seasonal changes. Analysis of modern calcite collected in the most decorated room of the cave, the Pisa Room, reveals spatial variations in stable oxygen and carbon isotope values, suggesting the influence of differential water flow paths and/or in-cave disequilibrium effects. However, calcite grown in the center of the Pisa Room is closest to isotopic equilibrium with modern drip water. Oxygen isotope records from Holocene stalagmites collected from this location indicate a close correlation with regional lake and tree-ring records, displaying changes consistent with the north-south precipitation dipole pattern as well as evidence for western-wide droughts. Further, the Titan Cave records reveal linkages during the late Holocene between the hydroclimate of northern Wyoming, sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska, and Pacific climate variability including the El Niño/Southern Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 56, No. 5

doi: 10.1130/abs/2024AM-403132

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