Abstract
Drip water at three sites appears to have been originated from a parent solution with an equilibrium carbon dioxide partial pressure ranging between 15,000 and 26,000 ppm. A large part of the variability in drip water composition observed in the cave can be explained by different stage of degassing. Water composition at several cave pools confirms that drip waters rapidly achieve equilibrium with the cave atmosphere after impact on the stalagmite apex, while oversaturation is retained longer. Water leaving the cave environment towards the phreatic zone has been estimated to be in equilibrium both with cave atmosphere and calcite during summer, while it retains some calcite oversaturation during winter. The difference of DIC between the solution entering and leaving the cave represents the total inorganic carbon lost by degassing into cave atmosphere and by precipitation of calcite. Separating these last two terms can be accomplished using the difference of calcium content of the two solutions. Once these concentrations have been defined, they were converted into fluxes by unit of surface using an average effective infiltration of 497 mm year−1 or 1.6 × 10−5 L m2 s−1. The resulting flux of carbon dioxide degassing from drip water is in the range of 0.03–0.06 µmol m−2 s−1. These values are similar to the results estimated by modelling of carbon dioxide variations in the cave atmosphere.
Material from this chapter has been originally published in Milanolo S, Gabrovšek F (2015) Estimation of carbon dioxide flux degassing from percolating waters in a karst cave: case study from Bijambare cave, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Chemie Erde—Geochemistry 75(4):465–474. DOI:10.1016/j.95chemer.2015.10.004
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Milanolo, S. (2016). From Soil to Cave: The Inorganic Carbon in Drip Water. In: Sources and Transport of Inorganic Carbon in the Unsaturated Zone of Karst. Springer Theses. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29308-0_8
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