The Salerno Valley (Campania Continental Margin, Southern Italy): Highlights into the Stratigraphic-Structural Setting and the Morpho-Bathymetry of a Pleistocene Half-Graben

New results on the seismic stratigraphy and morpho-bathymetry of the Pleistocene sedimentary basin of the Salerno Valley focused on the regional seismic stratigraphy of the Southern Campania passive continental margin (Southern Tyrrhenian sea) are presented here. Original data include Multibeam bathymetry as well as multichannel and single-channel seismic profiles, recently collected onboard the R/V Urania of the National Research Council of Italy (oceanographic cruise SISTERII). The Salerno Valley represents a half-graben sedimentary basin, whose identification has been controlled, during the Early Pleistocene, by the master fault Capri-Sorrento Peninsula, showing vertical throws of 1500 metres, which downthrows the Meso-Cenozoic carbonatic acoustic basement under the sedimentary basin. The geologic interpretation of multichannel seismic profiles has enabled the identification of a main unconformity, located at depths ranging from 3000 to 3500 metres under the sea bottom and correlated to the top of the Meso-Cenozoic carbonatic sequence, cropping out onshore in the Sorrento Peninsula structural high. This unconformity bounds upwards the carbonatic acoustic basement, strongly deformed by normal faulting, and represents the base of the Pleistocene basin filling of the Salerno Valley. The basin filling, with an overall thickness exceeding 1000 metres is characterized by parallel and continuous seismic reflectors alternating with chaotic intervals (gravity mass deposits).