I TRAVERTINI DELL’ ITALIA CENTRALE ADRIATICA: GENESI, CRONOLOGIA, SIGNIFICATO GEOMORFOLOGICO E PALEOAMBIENTALE

Abstract

Farabollini P., Materazzi M., Miccadei E. & Piacentini T., The travertines of the adriatic central Italy: genesis, chronology
and geomorphological and palaeoenvironmental significance. IT ISSN 0394-3356, 2004.
In the Adriatic side of Central Italy, travertines are present in few main and in several minor deposits, mainly distributed along the calcareous Apennine chain and the piedmont belt. Main deposits are located at different heights, from about 150 m up to 900 m a.s.l. They usually overlie calcareous or Miocene-Pliocene terrigenous bedrock or alternatively Pliocene-Quaternary deposits and are differently related with Quaternary continental deposits, characterizing the main river valleys of the Adriatic side of Central Italy (Esino, Potenza, Chienti, Tronto, Pescara, Salinello, Alento and Foro rivers).
Almost all deposits are constituted by a travertine plate discordant with bedrock or in succession with coarse fluvial deposits alternating with minor planar or through cross bedded facies, etc..
Travertine bodies are constituted by groups of lithofacies, evidencing different depositional mechanisms and environments; phytohermal facies, sometimes intercalated by phytoclastic gravels and sands, progressively changing valley-ward and upward, testify high energy environments locally alternated to low energy ones.
Concerning the chronology of deposits (some of these recently dated), they indicate age starting from upper Pleistocene up to early
Holocene (Sefro, Pioraco, Serrapetrona); other deposits, whose age is asumed on relationship with other Quaternary continental deposits, are attributed to middle Pleistocene (Montepiano and Civitella del Tronto).
All sites, even though showing deposits with different extension and thickness and different hydrochemical characteristics of circulating waters, have very significant common features, to reconstruct climatic context and depositional mechanisms and environment: typical fluvial environment, symmetric location with respect to river axis, presence of typical structures and close relationships with alluvial deposits.
The present work, together with the description of chronology and main depositional mechanisms of the above deposits, also propose
a new classification that, differently from other classifications in literature, also consider depositional environments with different, and
more or less localized, morphological conditions.