Speleothem paleoenviromental reconstructions: novel proxies and applications

Speleothems are widely used paleoclimate archives given that they can grow continuously for thousands of years, resist alteration, be precisely dated, and provide high resolution paleoenvironmental information. Stable isotopes of oxygen and carbon, along with select major and trace elements, are the primary chemical markers used in speleothems for paleoclimate reconstruction. Organic compounds hold the potential to preserve paleoenvironmental signals unattainable by inorganic species, but their study in speleothems is still underdeveloped (Wynn and Brocks, 2014; Blyth et al., 2016). The aim of this research is to combine all these proxies within an integrated approach for the analysis of speleothems to achieve a comprehensive reconstruction of paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic processes.