Estimation of the durations of breaks in deposition – Speleothem case study

Speleothems provide one of the most continuous terrestrial archives. However, due to changing conditions in temperature/humidity or the chemistry of percolating water, sedimentation breaks (hiatuses) and erosional events are possible and are commonly recorded in speleothems. Sedimentation breaks with durations longer than the resolution of the studied record should be considered in potential speleothem age-depth models. The most classic and reliable solution to the problem is the independent construction of age-depth models for the parts of speleothems separated by the hiatuses. However, in some cases, it is not possible to obtain a sufficient number of dating results for reliable age-depth model estimation. In such cases, the problem can be solved by the application of other sources of chronological information. Here, based on a few speleothem examples, an alternative approach – oxygen isotopic stratigraphy – is used to estimate the chronology for the parts of speleothems where there is not enough chronological information for classic age-depth models. As a result, the deposition break duration can be estimated.