%0 Book Section
%T Petrological Study as a Tool to Evaluate theDegradation of Speleothems in Touristic Caves,Castafiar de Ibor Cave, Caceres, Spain
publisher Springer Verlag
%D 2010
%U 978-3-540-95990-8
%@ https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/45503
%X In Castafiar cave the surface of most of the speleothems present dissolutionand corrosion features. In touristic caves, this process has usually been related tothe acidification of the atmospheric moisture caused by C02 from the breath ofvisitors. However, in Castafiar cave the process of corrosion has been also observedin rooms that are not visited by tourists. Petrological studies were carried out inthe speleothems affected by surface corrosion in Castafiar cave. The results indicatethat this process occurs not only at present time, but over a period of thousands ofyears, as evidenced by the presence of corrosion lines inside and on the surface ofthe speleothems. All this and the fact that Castafiar cave recovers very quickly fromchanges in the environmental parameters, indicates that the dissolution-corrosionprocess is slow and hence it is not related to the presence of visitors.
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