GNGTS 2018 - 37° Convegno Nazionale

GNGTS 2018 S essione 1.2 183 the bedrock of the area investigated with our study. In the study area, Triassic to Miocene carbonates overlaid by ophiolitic unit (Iannace et al. , 2005) form highly rocky coast alternated with bays, the main of which is the Noce River plain. The costal sector that we have investigated is a key area placed between a northern sector (the Campania coastal belt), where indicators of the Last Interglacial period are located at elevations comparable to those of the correlative highstands (Ascione and Romano, 1999), and a southern sector (southern Calabria), which has recorded fast uplift in the Late Pleistocene (Damiani, 1970; Miyauchi et al. , 1994; Westaway, 1993). However, the boundary between such sectors is not well defined (Ferranti et al. , 2006). The flight of marine terraces that in the study area stand in the elevation range between ~170 m and few m a.s.l. is already well known (Carobene and Dai Pra, 1991, 1990; Filocamo et al. , 2009). However, poor age constrains are available and, for that reason, recent Quaternary uplift of the study area is still debated. In fact, while Westaway (1993) estimated an uplift rate around 1 mm/yr since the Last Interglacial, other authors (Filocamo et al. , 2009) related the highest marine terraces to the Early Pleistocene and, in agreement with Carobene and Dai Pra (1991, 1990), assumed low Quaternary uplift rate. Materials and Methods. The area spanning across the Calabria-Basilicata boundary has been investigated using geomorphological and stratigraphical approaches to the study of marine terraces standing in the 0-20 m a.s.l. elevation range. 1:5000 scale topographic maps and a 5x5 m DEM have been used for preliminary geomorphological analysis and to plan the field surveys. In the field, careful geomorphological-stratigraphical analyses have been carried out on both shallow marine and continental deposits correlated with wave-cut platform or tidal notches. A laser distance meter was helpful to measure the elevation of paleo sea-level markers. The study has been integrated with mineralogical (X-ray powder diffraction, XRPD) and geochronological (U-series disequilibria dating) analyses on both Cladocora caespitosa corals and speleothems. A GE-Seifert ID 3003 and a PANalytical X’Pert with PIXcel detector diffractometres have been used for mineralogical characterization of each coral sample and some speleothem. U-series disequilibria dating has been performed by alpha-counting according to the chemical procedure described in Edwards et al. (1987). Results and conclusion. Our work on paleo-shorelines has provided new quantitative data on both sea-level fluctuations and evidence of vertical motions in the Maratea-Scalea sector of the Tyrrhenian Sea eastern margin during the late Quaternary. Our attention has been focused Fig. 1 - Location of the study sites shown on the5x5 m DEM.