PROGRESS IN PALEOENVIRONMENT RECORD STUDY FROM CAVE SEDIMENTS

Paleo-climate reconstruction by cave deposit is a hotspot in the research of the Quaternary global changes. Compared with other paleo-environment information media on land, cave dripstone-stalagmite has many superiorities including wide-ranging distribution, long-time span, sensitive to outside environment, suitable for U-series dating etc. In this paper, based on the stable isotope, micro-bedding structure of the stalagmite and trace element, the author reviewed recent advance in this research field. In the recent decades, great progress has been made in this research field at home and abroad. Cave chemical deposits have become one of most important information resources for the paleo-environment reconstruction. Paleo-climate has been reconstructed in different region with different time-scale. A series of cold event records have been discovered in cave speleothems. Making use of cave chemical deposits, scholars discuss the evolvement law of East Asia monsoon and find that the records of cave speleothem are of well corresponding relationship with ice core. But there are still some deficiency, for example,low resolution records, lack of systematical research and the problem of the relationship between δ~ 18 O and temperature. In different place, the relationship between them is different. Considering these deficiencies, we should strengthen the basic research to explore the relationship between growth of cave speleothem and climate change, look for new and more efficient paleo-climate proxy and construct reasonable index system to reconstruct paleo-climate with high resolution and ration.