Plio-Quaternary coastal landscape evolution of north-western Sicily (Italy)

ABSTRACT

We present and discuss the results of a geomorphological and geological study aimed at reconstructing the Plio-Quaternary evolution of the NW Sicily coastal belt , a low strain rate region in the central Mediterranean Sea.

We performed morphometric and field analysis of Quaternary marine terraces extracting more than 300 shoreline location points subdivided into six orders. The obtained dataset was validate by investigating the morphological changes along topographic profiles and comparing the extracted locations and elevations with the stratigraphic boundaries in the Plio-Quaternary units.

We distinguished two contiguous coastal sectors characterized by different paleo-shoreline elevations and Plio-Quaternary evolution, whose estimated uplift rates fit well with the well-known, regional eastward uplift rate increase along the Northern Sicilian continental margin.

Obtained results, summarized in a geomorphological map and a morpho-evolutionary model, provide new valuable data to characterize the active deformation processes and the seismotectonic setting in this critical sector of the Africa-Europe plate boundary.

KEYWORDS:

• Marine terraces
• coastal landscape evolution
• low strain rate region
• Quaternary
• sea-level change
• Southern Italy

Acknowledgements

We thank the three reviewers, Ana Costa, Marco Meschis and Ettore Valente, who contributed to the improvement of the manuscript thanks to their helpful suggestions and positive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration of interest

The authors reported no potential competing interests.

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study within the article and its supplementary materials are freely available.

Additional information

Funding

This research was developed in the framework of the Landscape Evolution Marker Online Network (LEMON) project (INQUA – AIQUA project) and was supported by the University of Palermo under Grant FFR_D14_DI_MAGGIO_2021 (C. Di Maggio).