Seminar: Observations of the damage of speleothems

Observations of the damage of speleothems during the Magnitude 8 Wenchuan earthquake, China

Prof. Xueqin Zhao

Broken or deformed speleothems can be used for paleoseismic research since they can be dated with radiometric techniques. But it rarely happens that speleologists are in caves just at the time of strong earthquake shocks, and there are only a few published cases of observations from caves visited immediately after an earthquake. The magnitude-8.0 Wenchuan earthquake (WCEQ) provided an excellent opportunity to study how earthquakes break speleothems. We present a systematic field investigation about damaged of speleothems in WCEQ in the northern section of Longmenshan Thrust Belt (LMSTB).