Karst areas and cave networks represent both dynamic systems and palaeoenvironmental archives, preserving records of palaeoclimate, geomorphological evolution, geodynamics, and broader palaeoenvironmental change across timescales ranging from decades to millions of years. Cave sediments, speleothems, endokarst morphologies, and associated biological and archaeological material collectively constitute a uniquely diverse and durable repository of Earth surface history.
Yet karst systems are inherently heterogeneous and complex environments. Their present-day hydrological functioning and their response to environmental change depend on this long-term evolution, which affects connectivity and flow paths within these systems. Furthermore, interpreting karst archives in terms of palaeoenvironmental reconstruction relies on understanding modern and ancient karst system processes and behaviour. Karstological and geomorphological analysis is therefore essential to decipher the complexity of the functioning and evolution of these systems, and the external forcings that control them (climate, tectonics, cryosphere, among others).
This session invites contributions that consider karst systems both as palaeoenvironmental archives and as dynamic systems, with particular attention to studies linking external forcings to karst system response. This session is explicitly interdisciplinary and welcomes contributions from palaeoclimatology, geomorphology, karst hydrology, palaeoanthropology, cryosphere research, and geodynamics. Relevant methodological approaches include, but are not limited to spatial analysis, cave monitoring, geochronology, geochemistry, geophysics, sedimentology and stratigraphy, and numerical modelling.