No abstract

Stalagmites are an extraordinarily powerful resource for the reconstruction of climatological palaeoseasonality. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of different types of seasonality preserved by stalagmites and methods for extracting this information. A new drip classification scheme is introduced, which facilitates the identification of stalagmites fed by seasonally responsive drips and which highlights the wide variability in drip types feeding stalagmites. This hydrological variability, combined with seasonality in Earth atmospheric processes, meteoric precipitation, biological processes within the soil, and cave atmosphere composition means that every stalagmite retains a different and distinct (but correct) record of environmental conditions. Replication of a record is extremely useful but should not be expected unless comparing stalagmites affected by the same processes in the same proportion. A short overview of common microanalytical techniques is presented, and suggested best practice discussed. In addition to geochemical methods, a new modelling technique for extracting meteoric precipitation and temperature palaeoseasonality from stalagmite d 18 O data is discussed and tested with both synthetic and real-world datasets.Finally, world maps of temperature, meteoric precipitation amount, and meteoric precipitation oxygen isotope ratio seasonality are presented and discussed, with an aim of helping to identify regions most sensitive to shifts in seasonality.

The nature of cave ventilation is of interest to cavers, speleologists, and paleoclimatologists working with stalagmites. Because cave ventilation systematics may change over the growth span of a stalagmite, understanding what factors affect them is critical for determining events that may have affected climate proxies within the stalagmite. Similarly, understanding how the hydrology of the drips feeding a stalagmite evolves through time is key to building robust records of paleoclimate, particularly because stalagmite records have become critical archives of climate change information of the last 500,000 years. Here we present data from an extensive, on-going monitoring effort at Yok Balum Cave, Belize, initiated in 2011, that characterizes high-resolution ventilation dynamics at this site. Clear seasonal ventilation regimes exist, driven by thermally induced inside-outside air density differences. The winter regime is dominated by air inflow into the cave, decreased drawdown from the epikarst into the cave, and a limited diurnal signal. Conversely, summer ventilation is dominated by air outflow from the cave, greater CO 2 drawdown and drip water degassing, and a strong diurnal signal. Active monitoring during a large (M7.4) earthquake in November 2012 provides a unique opportunity to assess the response of the cave atmosphere and hydrology to substantial seismic activity. Cave atmosphere dynamics and hydrology are found to be highly resilient to seismic activity, with no observable disturbance occurring around the earthquake, despite there being considerable evidence of physical disruption in the cave. Monitoring included different kinds of drips, and the earthquake affected none of the monitored drip types. This suggests that stalagmite-derived paleoclimate records are not affected by seismic activity, except in extreme cases where the stalagmite or conjugate stalactite is damaged or reoriented.

No abstract

This paper presents data from a study comparing student experience and attainment when teaching statistics using Traditional Teaching (TT) and Flipped Learning (FL) approaches on a Foundation level module at a UK university. A survey of students’ experience and perception of FL was conducted at the end of the year. The results showed that the students liked the flexibility of FL and believed that studying asynchronously encouraged them to improve their independent learning skill and motivated them to search for more information for the subject, a finding broadly supported by other studies (Price and Walker, 2021). However, what was surprising, is that students believed they learned ‘better’ with TT than with FL, a perception supported by student overall attainment data. The study concludes that careful considerations must be made to make FL effective. These include the student demographic and their mathematics competency, the module contents and difficulty level. Otherwise, the use of FL may reduce students’ engagement and academic performance in Maths at Foundation level.