Radon-222, a radioactive noble gas with a half-life of 3.8 days produced by radium-226, is a health hazard in caves, but also a powerful tracer of atmospheric dynamics. Here we show how airborne radon-222 can be analysed in a cave with multiple openings, the Pech Merle Cave in South-West France.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRadium-226, an alpha emitter with half-life 1600 years, is ubiquitous in natural environments. Present in rocks and soils, it is also absorbed by vegetation. The efficiency of Ra uptake by plants from the soil is important to assess for the study of heavy metals uptake by plants, monitoring of radioactive pollution, and the biogeochemical cycle of radium in the Critical Zone.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCarbon dioxide (CO) concentration (CDC) is an essential parameter of underground atmospheres for safety and cave heritage preservation. In the Chauvet cave (South France), a world heritage site hosting unique paintings dated 36,000 years BP, a high-sensitivity monitoring, ongoing since 1997, revealed: 1) two compartments with a spatially uniform CDC, a large volume (A) (40,000 to 80,000 m) with a mean value of 2.20 ± 0.
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