Introduction: Secondary minerals identified within lava tubes account for up to 40% of the total number of minerals documented from caves worldwide [1]. Sulfates are by far the most abundant group, but other mineral classes (oxides, hydroxides, etc.) are also present in lava tubes. Key minerals (e.g., gypsum, opal, ice) are used increasingly in answering questions regarding: 1) the source of elemental calcium, sulfur, and oxygen, 2) genetic mechanism including interaction with water of microbial life, and 3) paleoenvironmental information. All these topic could be extremely relevant to planetary cave science [2], and specific cave minerals could be also provide important information on potential biogenetic processes. In this work we present a dataset of secondary minerals from lava tubes belonging to three different volcanic regions of the World.

This study has been funded by the National Science Foundation (AGS 2024248), National Cave and Karst Research Institute seed grant, National Park Service (P16AC01228) to BPO. Additional support came from TUBOLAN project (PID2019 108672RJ-I00) from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the MICROCENO project (PTDC/CTA-AMB/0608/2020) from the Portuguese FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia). Dr. Fernando Gázquez acknowledges the Ramón y Cajal fellowship, RYC2020-029811-I of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Resumen de la comunicación oral presentada en 4th International Planetary Caves Conference, held 4-7 May, 2023 in Lanzarote, Spain. LPI Contribution No. 2697, id. 1032

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