Abstract
During a cycle of sea-level variation, coastal environments develop in different position of the continental shelf following seaward and landward shift of the coastline. They vary widely in character, reflecting the wide range of process-regimes that are brought about during the different stages of sea-level variations. Within this scenario, the morphology of continental shelves, mainly resulting from the combined effect of tectonic activity and eustatism, plays an important role in controlling the features and the preservation of coastal environments. Coastal deposits formed along continental shelves in the past, during different stages of sea-level changes, consist of discontinuous and thin depositional bodies, thus their reconstruction can be best carried out through the interpretation of high-resolution seismic data. Such a research approach is adopted in the present study to investigate a portion of the continental shelf of the southernmost sector of SE Sicily, in the offshore of Marzamemi village (Syracuse). The interpretation of high-resolution “Sparker” profiles allowed us to reconstruct the evolution of alluvial and lagoonal environments, established on a substratum of Pliocene or more ancient marine deposits, with the detection of several seismic units and unconformity surfaces, which have been related to alternating sedimentation and erosional processes, depicting the sea-level change framework of glacial-interglacial phases, from the late Pleistocene onward.
Highlights
The evolution of transitional environment is strictly connected to the sea-level changes, which reflect the combined action of tectonic activity and eustatism [1,2,3]
Coastal deposits formed along continental shelves in the past, during different stages of sea-level changes, consist of discontinuous and thin depositional bodies, their reconstruction can be best carried out through the interpretation of high-resolution seismic data. Such a research approach is adopted in the present study to investigate a portion of the continental shelf of the southernmost sector of SE Sicily, in the offshore of Marzamemi village (Syracuse)
The interpretation of high-resolution “Sparker” profiles allowed us to reconstruct the evolution of coastal environments, in a sector of the southern-most Ionian Sicilian littoral (Marzamemi village, Syracuse), whose development records the relative sea-level changes, as a response to combined regional tectonics and eustatic movements, occurred since the late Pleistocene
Summary
The evolution of transitional environment is strictly connected to the sea-level changes, which reflect the combined action of tectonic activity and eustatism [1,2,3]. Erosional surfaces incise the continental shelf during the falling and lowstand of sea-level and are followed by discontinuous transgressive deposits that accumulate during the successive landward shift of the coastline during rising sea-level [4,5]. The reconstruction of the details and the sedimentary record of these different phases of sea-level variations are best accomplished through the interpretation of high-resolution seismic profiles. The latter are the only tool with the resolution needed to unravel the facies and geometry of the thin sediment packages that mark the process-regime changes associated with sea-level variations. The resulting deposits can be fully marine or can include continental/transitional facies such as estuarine/lagoonal, fluvial and aeolian deposits, characterized by higher variability in response to the changes in the sea-level rise rate [5]
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