the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 29 May 2026
SISAL_monv1: a global database of cave monitoring observations
Abstract. Cave monitoring is the process of collecting observational data such as microclimate conditions, hydrogeochemistry and water movement in cave systems. The most common motivation is for speleothem science – the reconstruction of past climate and environmental variability from cave formations such as stalagmites. Applications also include the monitoring of potential recharge to aquifers, as well as cave conservation. PAGES-SISAL (Past Global Changes – Speleothem Isotope Synthesis and AnaLysis), an international working group focused on speleothem science, has created a new global database of cave monitoring data consisting of drip rates and drip water isotopes, and the modern carbonate precipitates that form from these drip waters (so called farmed carbonates, grown on artificial substrates). Moreover, we report meteoric precipitation amounts and water isotopes at or near to cave sites. The draft version of the database can be found at https://repo.researchdata.hu/privateurl.xhtml?token=43a43257-f06e-4dc5-9e96-6603eabe775f, which will be available under doi: 10.5158/ARP/29W5J3 upon publication. The database contains datasets from 75 caves, with summary information including meta-data on location, elevation, cave depth, lithology, measurement methods and citations for original publications. Speleothem records previously curated by SISAL in SISAL speleothem database versions and corresponding to monitored drip sites are also identified in the new SISAL monitoring database. To supplement observational data gaps and provide accessible and consistent climate data for users, surface climate (precipitation, evaporation, temperature) and meteoric water isotope data extracted from global climate model products are also included in the database.
- Preprint
(1571 KB) - Metadata XML
-
Supplement
(714 KB) - BibTeX
- EndNote
Status: open (until 06 Aug 2026)
- RC1: 'Comment on essd-2026-31', Anonymous Referee #1, 29 Jun 2026 reply
-
RC2: 'Comment on essd-2026-31', Anonymous Referee #2, 30 Jul 2026
reply
General Comments:
Most published speleothem studies rely on cave monitoring data from a single cave location to aid in the interpretation of speleothem paleoclimate records. The database presented in this work, SISAL_monv1, collates cave monitoring data associated with cave air, drip water, soil, meteoric precipitation, surface air, and farmed calcite from 147 global caves to allow for easy regional comparisons. The authors source their monitoring data from a combination of peer-reviewed published studies, theses, and a community-wide call. They supplement the monitoring data with climate and precipitation output from reanalysis products and isotope-enabled models. Though the primary application of this database is for speleothem paleoclimatology studies, researchers exploring karst, aquifer, and groundwater dynamics as well as proxy-model intercomparison will also benefit from this thorough and comprehensive database. The authors have taken great care to follow accessible data management practices, including offering a GUI webApp for data querying without knowledge of coding languages and providing extensive metadata. I strongly support publication of this manuscript following one general clarification and some minor specific comments as described below.
The authors report a total of 75 cave sites in the abstract. When querying the entire map in the SISAL webApp GUI for SISAL_monV1 using filter Type 2 (Lat from -90º to 90º, Lon from -180º to 180º), 75 cave sites appear, but only 72 of these have an associated site_id field and only 73 have associated coordinates. This is also inconsistent with Table S1, which reports a total of 147 sites. 103 of these sites have drip water data and 137 sites have cave air data. The authors should reconcile these discrepancies and provide a consistent definition of the size of their dataset. Further, it would be helpful to implement a standardized procedure to contribute to the database, where authors can upload published work or theses and the working group can periodically review, edit, and incorporate these new data. In the absence of this workflow, a dedicated data submission point of contact would encourage a more comprehensive database for future work.
Specific Comments:
Ln 69: Change correct to robust.
Ln 95: Specify modern drip water. Maybe: “modern drip water hydrochemistry, providing a modern context for speleothems.”
Ln 106: I am not convinced by the statement that “site specific models may not be useful or practical,” and would recommend a citation here if the authors wish to retain it. It seems to me that site-specific monitoring data should be used to investigate models of individual cave environments, since cave microclimate (and corresponding isotope fractionation) can vary substantially even between neighboring caves of similar lithology and depth or neighboring chambers within the same cave. This principle is mentioned in Ln 321 (“calibrating forward models…”) and is explored in mechanistic models such as CaveCalc (Owen et al., 2018).
Ln 108: I suggest adding an additional application of comparison to laboratory experiments (e.g., Dreybrodt et al., 2016, Wiedner et al., 2008).
Ln 111-114: The authors state the cave monitoring group site is no longer being updated and provide a last accessed date of 12-08-2019. Does this access date reflect the most up-to-date version of the website? If so, would be helpful to state.
Ln 128-129: “Drip water stable isotopes are the most commonly measured monitoring variable” – I recommend specifying that you are referring to this dataset compilation. Further, consider specifying “most commonly measured drip water monitoring variable,” as I would assume cave air temperature is more common (as substantiated by Table S1). See also Ln 301-302 and Figure 3 title “Monitoring data by region.”
Ln 204: What variable does timing of sample collection correspond to? Include in parentheses. See also Ln 206.
Fig 3: If there are no sites or data in the “Other” category, I recommend removing this from the graphs and legends. Consider also removing the other categories with no data (arid, hyper arid) and instead stating data paucity for those climate classifications in the figure caption.
Table S1 Row 2: Would be helpful to include units, unless they vary substantially across publications.
Table S1 Column BM: Would be helpful to separate time span and sampling resolution.
Technical Corrections:
Ln 137-138: Sentence is cut-off.
Ln 184: “Includes” should be lowercase to match formatting of other bullet points.
Ln 216-217: “In addition it provides information on which surface did the modern carbonate grow and what was its mineralogy” – this feels strangely worded. I recommend: “In addition it provides information on the surface substrate and mineralogy of modern carbonate growth.”
Ln 216-219: “Here modern carbonates refer to…” is repeated twice.
Ln 227: Last sentence (“The colors of the format of the particular field.”) is incomplete.
Ln 231: Missing parenthesis after Supplement.
Ln 363: Remove extra parenthesis before citation.
Table S1 Column H: “Humidity” misspelled.
Table S1 Column N: “Dripwater” should be two words here to be consistent with its other appearances in the paper.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2026-31-RC2
Data sets
SISAL_monv1: a global database of cave monitoring observations Pauline C. Treble et al. https://repo.researchdata.hu/privateurl.xhtml?token=43a43257-f06e-4dc5-9e96-6603eabe775f
Viewed
| HTML | XML | Total | Supplement | BibTeX | EndNote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 187 | 69 | 4 | 260 | 4 | 10 | 11 |
- HTML: 187
- PDF: 69
- XML: 4
- Total: 260
- Supplement: 4
- BibTeX: 10
- EndNote: 11
Viewed (geographical distribution)
| Country | # | Views | % |
|---|
| Total: | 0 |
| HTML: | 0 |
| PDF: | 0 |
| XML: | 0 |
- 1
This manuscript presents SISAL_monv1, a global cave-monitoring database. I find this to be a valuable and timely dataset paper. The database will be highly useful for speleothem science, palaeoclimate reconstruction, karst hydrology, groundwater-recharge studies, and data-model comparison. The manuscript is clearly written, the database structure is well documented, and the community effort behind the compilation is substantial. I strongly support publication of this manuscript, subject only to minor clarifications that would improve usability and prevent possible misinterpretation by future users.
1. The database includes site-specific precipitation amount and precipitation isotope sample data, but it also includes monthly precipitation and precipitation-isotope values extracted from gridded products such as MSWEP and IsoGSM. I suggest that the authors explain this relationship more explicitly. In particular, it would be helpful to clarify whether gridded values are extracted at the cave coordinates or precipitation-monitoring-site coordinates, how users should handle differences in temporal resolution between observed samples and monthly products, and whether monthly precipitation isotope values are precipitation-weighted means. This would help users avoid treating local observations and gridded estimates as interchangeable.
2. It would be very useful for users to quickly know the duration of the monitoring data available for each site and each data type. At present, users may need to inspect the sample tables directly to determine the start and end dates of precipitation isotope monitoring, drip-water isotope monitoring, drip-rate monitoring, or modern carbonate sampling. I'm not sure if it is easy to add summary fields, either in the metadata tables or as an additional summary table, giving the monitoring start date, end date, duration, and possibly number of samples for each site and data type. This would greatly improve the discoverability and usability of the dataset, especially for users interested in comparing records across sites or selecting datasets suitable for time-series analysis.
3. Missing parentheses around Lines 363-364.