Verso una reinterpretazione delle evidenze geomorfologiche di neotettonica in un'area di tettogenesi recente: l'Appennino Campano-Lucano

Abstract

The experience acquired during the "Progetto Geodinamica" (CNR, Italy), confirmed that geomorphological investigations give an essential contribution to neotectonic reconstructions especially when recent phases of tectonic activity have been recorded in terms of structural landforms and long term landscape evolution. This is the case of large portions of the Campanian -Lucanian Apennines chain where sedimentary formations coeval with (or intervening between) neotectonic events were not dated. New geological and geomorphological data suggest that the southern Apennines chain is much younger than previously assumed, with evidence of a trhust activity even in Pleistocene times. In addition, extentional tectonics was not confined to post-thrust times only, but occurred also during the compressional events as a back-arc rifting gradually migrating towards the foreland. Such new geodynamic constraints require that the morphostructural evolution of the region is to be re-considered. As a matter of fact most present structural landforms would be coeval with the thrusting. Similar events and stages of morphological evolution are not to necessarely be assumed as coeval over a large region, in addition evidence of uplift may be the result of either a compressional deformation or post-thrusting elastic rebound of the subducted litospheric slab.