Natural attrition and growth frequency variations of stalagmites in southwest Sulawesi over the past 530,000 years

N Scroxton; MK Gagan; GB Dunbar; LK Ayliffe; WS Hantoro; CC Shen; JC Hellstrom; JX Zhao; H Cheng; RL Edwards; H Sun; H Rifai

Journal article

Natural attrition and growth frequency variations of stalagmites in southwest Sulawesi over the past 530,000 years

N Scroxton, MK Gagan, GB Dunbar, LK Ayliffe, WS Hantoro, CC Shen, JC Hellstrom, JX Zhao, H Cheng, RL Edwards, H Sun, H Rifai

Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology | Published : 2016

DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2015.10.030

Abstract

Previous studies have analysed the age distributions of stalagmites harvested from multiple caves and inferred important palaeoclimate changes that explain stalagmite growth phases. However, stalagmites may grow over tens of thousands of years; thus, they are irreplaceable. The value of speleothems to science must be weighed against their potential and current aesthetic and cultural value. In this study, we show that some palaeoclimate information can be extracted from a cave system without the removal of stalagmites. Our case study is based on basal U-Th dates for 77 individual stalagmites from thirteen caves located in and around Bantimurung-Bulusaraung National Park, southwest Sulawesi, I..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

John Hellstrom Author

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

We would like to thank David Heslop for his help with the statistics and for providing insight into the early versions of this paper. We thank the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) for logistical support, Engkos Kosasih, Djupriono, and the staff of Bantimurung-Bulusaraung National Park (with special thanks to Saiful) for assistance in the field during the 2009 and 2011 expeditions. We are particularly grateful to Neil Anderson, Dan Zwartz, Garry Smith and Bambang Suwargadi, who provided expertise in cave conservation and technical assistance. The work was conducted in Indonesia under Kementerian Negara Riset dan Teknologi (RISTEK) research permit numbers 04/TKPIPA/FRP/SM/IV/2009 and 1b/TKPIPA/FRP/SM/I/2011. Financial support for the research was provided by the Australian Research Council Discovery grants DP0663274 and DPI 095673 to M.K.G., W.S.H., J.-x.Z., J.C.H., R.L.E. and H.C.; and the National Natural Science Foundation of China grant NSFC-41230524 to H.C. U-Th dating at the HISPEC was supported by the ROC MOST and NTU grants (102-2116-M-002-022, 103-2119-M-002-022, and 101R7625) to CCS.