Soil and karst aquifer hydrological controls on the geochemical evolution of speleothem-forming drip waters, Crag Cave, southwest Ireland

In recent years there has been increased interest in cave speleothems as archives of palaeoclimate. Monitoring of rainfall and soil and karst water chemistries was performed at Crag Cave, Castleisland, Co. Kerry, southwest Ireland, in August 1997 and January 1998 in order to understand temporal and spatial variations in karst water hydrology and chemistry and their implications for interpreting the potential palaeohydrological signal preserved by speleothems at this site. Temporal variations in karst water drip rates and geochemistry allow drips to be classified by hydrological response to rainfall and the associated processes of dilution, piston flow, source change and prior calcite precipitation during aquifer throughflow. Evolution from soil matrix and preferential flow solutions has also been determined to exert an important control on karst water chemistries. As a result of these findings we present hydrogeochemical models and plumbing diagrams that delineate the controls on karst water evolution at a number of sampling locations within the cave at this site. We propose that a palaeohydrological signal may be recorded by Crag Cave speleothems that may be interpreted via the study of Mg/Ca ratios in speleothems linked to monitoring of modern drip water chemistry. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.