Author name: Richard J. Harrison

No matter how quiet and pristine a cave setting may appear, all speleothems contain assemblages of magnetic minerals. These iron oxide minerals are derived largely from overlying soils, though minor fractions may come from the residuum of dissolved bedrock, reworked sediment carried by episodic floods, geomicrobiological activity, and even windblown dust. Regardless of their origin, these minerals become aligned with Earth’s ambient magnetic field before they are fixed within a speleothem’s growing carbonate matrix. Here, we describe how the magnetism of stalagmites and flowstone can be used to chronicle high-resolution geomagnetic behavior and environmental change.

Caves occur everywhere on our planet, from the tropics to the high latitudes and from below sea level to alpine settings. Cave morphologies provide clues to their formation mechanisms, and their iconic mineralogical features—stalagmites and stalactites—carry a wealth of paleoenvironmental information encoded in their geochemistry and mineralogy. Recent work demonstrates a striking improvement in our ability to decode these paleoenvironmental proxies, and dramatic geochronological advances enable higher resolution records that extend further back in geologic time. Cave research addresses an ever-increasing range of geoscience problems, from establishing the timing and mechanisms of climate change to uncovering detailed records of geomagnetic field behavior.