Speleothem evidence for late Holocene climate variability and floods in Southern Greece
2014
Finné, Martin | Bar-Matthews, Miryam | Holmgren, Karin | Sundqvist, Hanna S. | Liakopoulos, Ilias | Zhang, Qiong
We present stable isotope data (δ¹⁸O, δ¹³C) from a detrital rich stalagmite from Kapsia Cave, the Peloponnese, Greece. The cave is rich in archeological remains and there are reasons to believe that flooding of the cave has directly affected humans using the cave. Using a combination of U–Th and ¹⁴C dating to constrain a site-specific correction factor for (²³²Th/²³⁸U) detrital molar ratio, a linear age model was constructed. The age model shows that the stalagmite grew during the period from ca. 950BC to ca. AD 830. The stable oxygen record from Kapsia indicates cyclical changes of close to 500yr in precipitation amount, with rapid shifts towards wetter conditions followed by slowly developing aridity. Superimposed on this signal, wetter conditions are inferred around 850, 700, 500 and 400–100BC, and around AD 160–300 and AD 770; and driest conditions are inferred to have occurred around 450BC, AD 100–150 and AD 650. Detrital horizons in the stalagmite indicate that three major floods took place in the cave at 500BC, 70BC and AD 450. The stable carbon isotope record reflects changes in biological activity being a result of both climate and human activities.
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