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Description
The Sistema Huautla cave system is the deepest known in the Western Hemisphere. It is located in the Sierra Mazateca Mountain Ranges near Jiménez de Huautla, Oaxaca. There are over 29 separately discovered entrances into this karst environment making it the 28th longest cave system in the world. It can be considered by some as one of the most complex vertical drainage systems on Earth. This extensive study site has been an area of interest among cavers and scientific researchers for nearly 6 decades. Speleothem samples from the study sites have been found to be over 433,000 years old. The samples retrieved from Huautla are considered to be in pristine condition compared to most other tropical stalagmites used for U-Th dating. Similar to δ¹⁸O isotopic values, speleothem δ¹³C isotopic values can reveal key aspects about past climatic and environmental conditions. In addition to climate, local processes influence speleothem δ¹³C values in various ways, which is why confident and detailed interpretations of this proxy are often a challenge to determine. The initial hypothesis for this data set was to understand if the contributions of either C3 or C4 vegetation could strongly influence the carbon isotopic signals that could determine changes in vegetation as an paleoecological proxy for this region.
Publisher Location
Las Vegas (Nev.)
Publication Date
Fall 11-21-2025
Publisher
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Keywords
Isotope Geochemistry; Karst Topography; Speleothem; Carbon Isotopes; Geology
Disciplines
Earth Sciences | Geology | Physical Sciences and Mathematics
File Format
File Size
2600 MB
Permissions
Google Drive\Institutional Repository\OUR_OfficeOfUGResearch\Symposia\2025 Fall Symposium
Recommended Citation
Marcos, Paloma, "Controls on Speleothem Carbon Isotopes" (2025). Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters. 270.
https://oasis.library.unlv.edu/durep_posters/270
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IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Comments
Mentor: Matthew Lachniet