Andy Baker

Speleothem Isotopes – Synthesis and Analysis is a global working group of scientists interested in caves, stalagmites and past climate and environmental change.

Thanks to the support of PAGES, this has grown into a global network of collaborators who have worked to bring together a database of all speleothem (= cave deposit) records of their oxygen and carbon isotopic composition. Oxygen isotope commonly provided a record of the rainfall that reaches the cave as drip waters. Carbon isotopes are a more complex archive of climate,  vegetation and drip water geochemical history.

Now, the third version of the database has been published, led by Nikita Kaushal and Franziska A. Lechleitner. The database is larger, and now includes trace element data for many of the database entities. Trace element composition can help interpret the climate and environmental record of a speleothem, as these can provide information on the chemical evolution and source of the drip waters.

The database paper is at: https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/16/1933/2024/

This a large SQL database, and the SISAL team also provides a web app to easily extract relevant data: https://geochem.hu/SISAL_webApp/