A Reproduction of Recent Climate of the Southwestern United States Produced from Cave Deposits at Kartchner Caverns, Arizona

• Main Author: Waltz, David Robert
• Language: en_US
• Published: The University of Arizona. 2014
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/555568

Ratios of the oxygen isotope δ¹⁸O can be used as a proxy to determine the climate conditions of the past, as very low levels of δ¹⁸O are indicative of a wet climate, while higher levels signify that the climate of a particular region is drier. For this project, the levels of δ¹⁸O collected from stalagmites within the cave Kartchner Caverns in Cochise Country, Arizona, are collected and dated through uranium-thorium dating in order to produce an age model that shows the changes in the levels of δ¹⁸O for this site for the last 2,700 years. This age model is then compared to previously produced age models from other caves in Arizona and New Mexico, as well as with tree ring data in order to provide a more complete look at the recent climate of the region. The Kartchner Caverns age mode provided the most similarities with the other speleothems from southern Arizona, while only being weakly comparable to the age models produced from the New Mexico caves as well as the dendrochronological data.