Marine geological maps of the Campania Region (Southern Tyrrhenian sea, Italy): considerations and contributions to a different scale of geological survey

Abstract

Marine geological maps of the Campania region have been constructed both to 1:25.000 and to a 1:10.000 scales in the frame of research projects financed by the Italian National Geological Survey, focusing, in particular, on the Gulf of Naples (Southern Tyrrhenian sea), a complex volcanic area where volcanic and sedimentary processes strongly interacted during the Late Quaternary and on the Cilento Promontory offshore. In this paper the examples of the geological sheets n. 464 “Isola di Ischia” and n. 502 “Agropoli” have been studied. The integration of the geological maps with the seismo-stratigraphic setting of the study areas has also been performed based on the realization of interpreted seismic profiles, providing interesting data on the geological setting of the subsurface. The coastal geological sedimentation has been studied in detail in the Ischia and Agropoli offshore. The mapped geological units are represented by: i) the rocky units of the acoustic basement (volcanic and/or sedimentary), ii) the deposits of the littoral environment, including the deposits of submerged beach and the deposits of toe of coastal cliff, iii) the deposits of the inner shelf environment, including the inner shelf deposits and the bioclastic deposits, iv) the deposits of the outer shelf environment, including the clastic deposits and the bioclastic deposits, v) the Lowstand System Tract, vi) the Pleistocene relict marine units, vii) different volcanic units, Pleistocene in age. The seismo-stratigraphic data, coupled with the sedimentological and environmental data provided by the geological maps, allow to give new insights on the geologic evolution of this area during the Late Quaternary.