Pavel Pracný

Masaryk University | MUNI · Department of Geological Sciences

Hydrological/hydrochemical properties of drip points in Kateřinská Cave (Moravian Karst) were studied with focus on their relation to climatic variables, especially rainfall and temperature. The discharges of two drips (marked as meteorologically sensitive drips) showed statistically significant positive correlations with rainfalls with respective...

The Mg/Ca ratios in karst water are generally believed to comprise information on climate, and, being encoded in speleothems, they are utilized as paleoenvironmental proxy. However, the mechanism and dynamic of Mg release from limestone during dissolution is not well understood. A theoretical evolution of the Mg/Ca ratios during limestone dissoluti...

Magnesium (Mg) and strontium (Sr) preserved in speleothems are among the terrestrial climatic proxies. The mechanism of their release from impurities in limestone bedrock is usually neglected in paleoclimatic studies mainly because it is not very well understood; most cation release studies focus on pure minerals instead of limestone. Therefore, th...

In the period from June 2020 to June 2022, continuous monitoring of the cave environment parameters was carried out in the Amatérská Cave (Moravian Karst, Czech Republic) to assess the risk factors associated mainly with the surface above the cave. The research was carried out both by monthly sampling of the cave water, but also in the period from...

The anthropogenic impact of the water and CO2 exhaled by visitors was studied in the show caves of the Moravian Karst (Czech Republic), especially in the Balcarka and Výpustek Caves. Two alternative models based on (1) the known/presumed composition of the breathed air and physical activity of visitors and (2) the detailed monitoring microclimatic...

The study in the Amatérská Cave (Moravian Karst) in the Czech Republic from August 2020 to January 2023 focused on isotopic analyses of cave and precipitation waters to understand the evolution of the hydrological season. Six sampling sites were chosen-five dripwaters (E, K, M, N, and R) and a pool (J), and a total of 127 samples were collected. In...

Moravian Karst, the largest karst region in the Czech Republic, is built primarily from Devonian limestones and contains several cave systems with substantial speleothem formations. In search for causes of observed speleothem corrosion and destruction, low– or non–saturated drip/seepage water sources are often suspected causes. The presented study...

Corrosion processes were studied in epigenic caves of the Moravian Karst (MK). Samples of naturally corroded speleothems and carbonate rocks collected in various MK caves were compared with limestone and calcite standards that were corroded under well-controlled conditions in the laboratory. Two stages of corrosion were distinguished: (1) an early...

The dripwater hydrology and chemical parameters are used to determine water flow paths and reservoir properties of upper karst. This work was aimed to advance previous research in Moravian Karst (Czech Republic) with data on the isotopic composition of the water. The study is focused on the stable isotopic composition (δ18O and δ2H) and hydrogeoche...

The presented device (Dripmeter) is based on an original general-purpose automatic logger station, which can be equipped with a variety of measuring stations (drip rate; pH, EC; air CO2 concentration; barometric pressure; RH; water temperature). Moreover, the device stores 0.5 L of water to be regularly sampled and analyzed in a lab. The logger sta...

The result presents a study of karst rocks from Dämenovska Valley in Slovakia. The chemical and mineralogical composition of the rocks was studied, with a special focus on trace elements Mg and Sr. The rocks show various compositions with dominant dolomite or calcite structure.

Anthropogenic impact on CO2 levels was studied in the Bear Chamber of the Výpustek Cave, a show cave in the Moravian Karst (Czech Republic), during a period of active ventilation and enhanced attendance. The study showed that the natural CO2 levels were controlled by (i) the natural CO2 influxes from soils/epikarst (up to ∼ 5.64 × 10⁻² mol s⁻¹); an...

The anomalous drip in the Punkva caves (Moravian Karst) shows specific hydrogeochemical properties such as low SIcalcite~0.14±0.11 (standard deviation), low mineralization (4.53±0.42)×10-3moll-1, and enhanced values of δ13C (-7.85 to -8.35‰ VPDB), Mg/Ca×1000 ratio (45.7±3.3), and Sr/Ca×1000 ratio (0.65±0.06). By these properties, the anomalous drip...

Water infiltrating into cave as dripwater is (1) source of component for speleothem growth and (2) source of information about climate in given region. Depending on the processes along the water flow path, dripwater can show different properties. Generally, the dripwater entering a cave releases CO2, becomes supersaturated by calcite that precipita...

Carbon dioxide (CO2) was studied in Punkva Caves in the Moravian Karst (Czech Republic) during a one-year period from February 2012 to March 2013. Partial pressures of the CO2 corresponding to aqueous carbonates, (Formula presented.) (10−2.91–10−2.35, i.e., 0.12–0.45 vol%), and those participating in the initial dripwater formation, (Formula presen...

Abstrakt Cave speleothems grow from supersaturated dripwaters and store information about various karst processes along the water flow path. Anomalous non-saturated waters may occur if (1) rainfall water passes very rapidly through karst profile or if (2) two saturated waters of different compositions are mixed. The low mineralization close to sat...

Hydrogeochemical parameters of cave dripwater contain information about the processes related to the water flow path. One of the processes that may occur is the prior calcite precipitation on hidden upper-lying cave levels. For prediction of such spaces, it was proposed a simplified criterion, UCL = 1/(EC norm x ΔQ n), where EC norm is a dimensionl...