Abstract
Abstract. An 82 m long sedimentary succession was retrieved from the Fucino Basin, the largest intermountain tectonic depression of the central Apennines. The basin hosts a succession of fine-grained lacustrine sediments (ca. 900 m-thick) possibly continuously spanning the last 2 Ma. A preliminary tephrostratigraphy study allows us to ascribe the drilled 82 m long record to the last 180 ka. Multi-proxy geochemical analyses (XRF scanning, total organic/inorganic carbon, nitrogen and sulfur, oxygen isotopes) reveal noticeable variations, which are interpreted as paleohydrological and paleoenvironmental expressions related to classical glacial–interglacial cycles from the marine isotope stage (MIS) 6 to present day. In light of the preliminary results, the Fucino sedimentary succession is likely to provide a long, continuous, sensitive, and independently dated paleoclimatic archive of the central Mediterranean area.
Highlights
Understanding the spatio-temporal variability, the magnitude, and the different expressions of Quaternary orbital and millennial-scale paleoclimatic changes across regions is a frontier challenge of modern paleoclimatology (e.g. EPICA community members, 2006)
total nitrogen (TN) and total sulfur (TS) were determined with a vario Micro cube combustion CNS elemental analyser (Elementar, Germany) after combustion at 1150 ◦C at the University of Cologne, Germany
Based on their paleoclimatic/paleoenvironmental significance, the consistent variations in all of the presented proxies (Fig. 5) perfectly match the timescale proposed by the preliminary tephrochronological framework (Fig. 4)
Summary
Understanding the spatio-temporal variability, the magnitude, and the different expressions of Quaternary orbital and millennial-scale paleoclimatic changes across regions is a frontier challenge of modern paleoclimatology (e.g. EPICA community members, 2006). Addressing this issue requires the acquisition of regionally representative high-resolution and well-dated records of climatic variability. Paleoclimatic records, based on different dating methods, for evaluating the temporal relationship between them and with respect to the main climatic forcing (e.g. orbital) With this purpose, an 82 m long core was recovered from the central eastern Fucino Basin (F1–3 in Fig. 1) in June 2015. The major goals of this drilling were to (i) collect a continuous record back to MIS (marine isotope stage) 6, (ii) assess the quality of the lacustrine sedimentary succession, (ii) explore the sensitivity of different paleoclimatic proxies, and (iii) document the presence of widespread tephras useful for regional to extra-regional correlation and their suitability for 40Ar/39Ar dating
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