Petrographical and geochemical changes in Bosnian stalagmites and their palaeo-environmental significance

Abstract

Detailed petrographic observations have been coupled with trace element and δ13C - δ18O analyses in order to investigate their dynamics in two Holocene Bosnian speleothems. The potential of this multiproxy approach in providing a means to extract palaeo-environmental information from stalagmites whose stable isotope signals are noisy and without obvious trends has been tested. The studied stalagmites are mostly characterized by columnar microcrystalline fabric. At the sub-millimetre scale of lamination, different microcrystalline columnar sub-types (open and closed) have been detected and classified on the basis of the observed porosity and the crystallite size. The presence of variations in crystallite arrangement at the lamina scale suggests the occurrence of small-scale environmental changes recorded in the studied samples. A positive correlation was found found between Mg concentration, δ13C and fabric variations, while a negative correlation relates those parameters with Sr concentration. Both δ13C and fabric changes appear to be directly related to changes in hydrology. The detailed observation of calcite fabrics combined with stable isotope and trace element profiles allowed for the interpretation of the conditions under which the speleothems were deposited.

Keywords

• speleothems
• stable isotopes
• trace elements
• calcite fabrics
• microstratigraphy