Geomorphology of the continental shelf around the Sorrento Peninsula (southern Italy)

Through the elaboration of preexisting bathymetric data, ecographic profiles and subaqueous geomorphological surveying, an original schematic geomorphological map of the continental shelf bounding the Sorrento Peninsula has been drawn. Structural control (block-faulting) on the overall morphology of the shelf is evident. Off the northern coast of the Peninsula, the tectonic subsidence seems to have continued up to the Holocene, while within the Sorrento promontory the latest episodes of faulting seem to have occurred during the second half of Middle Pleistocene. A number of submerged marine terraces (both of erosional and depositional origin) and other palaeo-sea level marks can be recognized. They can be grouped into a dozen of elevation orders between 6 and 120 m below the present sea level. Many of these orders are represented, at least locally, by broad abrasion platforms (much broader than the ones marking the low-stand of the last glacial maximum) and are tentatively interpreted as polycyclic terraces repeatedly abraded during eustatic stands of the late Middle Pleistocene and the Upper Pleistocene. -Authors