New data on the Holocenic sea-level rise in NW Sicily (Central Mediterranean Sea)

Abstract

The emerged and submerged coastal tracts of selected areas in NW Sicily (San Vito Lo Capo Promontory and Marettimo Island in the Egadi Archipelago) have been studied by means of an interdisciplinary approach (geomorphological and neotectonic surveys, palaeontological, depositional and petrographical observations) with the aim to characterize the coastal evolution of the sector over a wide time frame (Late Pleistocene and Holocene) and to recognize the geological indicators of relative sea-level fluctuations. Neotectonic studies performed all along the coastal sector through the check of the present-day height of marine notches and of the inner margin of marine terraces of Eutyrrhenian age allowed to assess the entity of post-Tyrrhenian differential crustal movements in the area. The calculated rates of uplift confirm the relative stability of the area in the last 125 ka and that the relative corrections introduced can be considered negligible in the reconstruction of sea-level rise in the last thousand years. On the base of these considerations, the sea-level rise curve which has been drawn for the Holocene through the radiometric dating ( 14C and U/Th) of submerged speleothems and Vermetid reefs is assumed to gain a regional significance and to represent a good reference datum for the Central–Southern Mediterranean Sea. In addition, the sea-level rise data are in good agreement with the predicted sea-level curves based on geophysical models previously applied to the same study areas.