Water resources in western North America depend on winter precipitation, yet our knowledge of its sensitivity to climate change remains limited. Similarly, understanding the potential for future loss of winter snow pack requires a longer perspective on natural climate variability. Here we use stable isotopes from a speleothem in southwestern Oregon to reconstruct winter climate change for much of the past 13,000 years. We find that on millennial

We analyzed speleothem calcite from the Oregon Caves National Monument, southwestern Oregon, to determine the preservation, distribution, concentrations and sources of aliphatic lipid compounds preserved in the calcite. Maximum speleothem growth rate occurs during interglaciations and minimum during glacial intervals. Concentrations of the total lipid compounds range from 0.5 to 12.9 ug g-1. They increase at times of low speleothem growth rate, suggesting

We examine the relation between d18O in rainwater collected in southwestern Oregon and climate variables including temperature, parcel trajectory, precipitation amount, and specific humidity. Local surface air temperature at the time of sample collection explains a large proportion of d18O variability suggesting that paleoclimatic archives that are related to rainfall d18O should be useful for qualitative temperature reconstructions. Models of Rayleigh

The growth of carbonate formations in caves (speleothems) is sensitive to changes in environmental conditions at the surface (temperature, precipitation and vegetation) and can provide useful paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental information. We use 73 230Th dates from speleothems collected from a cave in southwestern Oregon (USA) to constrain speleothem growth for the past 380 000 years. Most speleothem growth occurred during interglacial periods,

The National Institute for Research & Development of Isotopic & Molecular Technologies (INCDTIM) is organizing in Cluj-Napoca the Ninth ESIR Workshop. Scope The Workshop will focus on facilitating contacts and fostering co-operation and networking among scientists from Central and Eastern European countries and their Western colleagues. The topics of the meeting will cover all major fields of application of isotopes. Talks by invited speakers, presenting

Paleosols from the Bahamas and the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) are closely related to past atmospheric circulation and dust load. In the Bahamas the sources of insoluble residue (IR) must be allogenic because the islands consist of almost pure carbonates. The Al2O3:TiO2 ratio was used to establish the provenance of the IR of the paleosols. Comparisons of this ratio from Bahamian paleosols, North African dust,Lesser Antilles ash and North American