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Bat guano isotope systems (δ13C, δ15N, and δ2H) integrate environmental, climatic, and ecological signals

Metadata Updated: April 21, 2025

Bat guano is an emergent paleoenvironmental archive and isotopic compositions of bat guano have been tied to climate, vegetation, and trophic processing in isolated studies. However, a comprehensive, multi-isotope assessment of bat guano has not been established, hindering the proliferation of guano-based paleoenvironmental research. In this study, we comprehensively examine isotopic compositions of a 12,000-year long bat guano core from Cave Springs Cave, Alabama as well as relevant isotopic data from other sources to improve our understanding of each isotope system (δ13C, δ15N, and δ2H), the source-to-sink components of guano isotope pathways, and the fractionation occurring along each multi-step isotopic pathway from sources (i.e., soil, atmosphere, rainfall) to guano formation. We find the δ13C values of guano from Cave Springs Cave primarily reflect local vegetation with a large shift that coincides with the onset of the Anthropocene (after 1950 C.E.). We also determine that the δ15N values of Cave Springs Cave guano were not associated with precipitation or any other climatic variable but instead reflect a change in bat diet and agricultural intensification during the past 600 years. Overall, these data adds to the existing body of bat guano research and supports bat guano as a reliable archive for paleoenvironmental reconstructions.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: Creative Commons Attribution

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Dates

Metadata Created Date June 29, 2024
Metadata Updated Date April 21, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from USDA JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 29, 2024
Metadata Updated Date April 21, 2025
Publisher Agricultural Research Service
Maintainer
Identifier 10.15482/USDA.ADC/25970383.v1
Data Last Modified 2024-06-12
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 005:18
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 5ef183e2-4f48-41d3-ab70-b48834196e77
Harvest Source Id d3fafa34-0cb9-48f1-ab1d-5b5fdc783806
Harvest Source Title USDA JSON
License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Program Code 005:040
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 5c064b73ab955985325747b2d41a4db56b919530917264b7db59c60ee659bfe0
Source Schema Version 1.1
Temporal 2018-01-01/2018-01-01

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