Caves are unique environments that preserve a wealth of information about human activities (such as occupation and art) and about past climate using archives contained within speleothems. Monitoring studies in show caves demonstrate potential impacts of visitors on the natural cave environment, and provide guidance on conservation strategies. Recent speleothem research shows that the behaviour of chemical climate proxies can be complex and sensitive to the local cave environment. Environmental monitoring of wild caves is vital in order to better understand the relationships between surface weather, the cave microphysical environment, the controls on carbonate deposition, and proxy emplacement in speleothems and underpins robust climate-proxy interpretations.

This session provides a forum to present the results of multi-annual instrumental monitoring of the atmosphere-soil-karst-cave system. We invite contributions from all sectors of the community with experience in monitoring relationships between climate and cave hydrology, air dynamics, carbonate deposition, and their implications for cave conservation, understanding karst processes and climate interpretation from proxy records.