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Global and Planetary Change 34 (2002) 121 – 140

www.elsevier.com/locate/gloplacha

New data on the Holocenic sea-level rise in NW Sicily
(Central Mediterranean Sea)

F. Antoniolia,*, G. Cremonab, F. Immordinob, C. Puglisia, C. Romagnolic,
S. Silenzia,d, E. Valpredab, V. Verrubbia

a ENEA, Environmental Department, Casaccia, Via Anguillarese 301, 00060 S. Maria di Galeria, Rome, Italy
b ENEA, Environmental Department, Via Don Fiammelli 2, 40129, Bologna, Italy

c Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, University of Bologna, Piazza di Porta S. Donato 1, 40127, Bologna, Italy
d ICRAM, Via di Casalotti, 300, 00166, Rome, Italy

Abstract

The emerged and submerged coastal tracts of selected areas in NW Sicily (San Vito Lo Capo Promontory and Marettimo
Island in the Egadi Archipelago) have been studied by means of an interdisciplinary approach (geomorphological and
neotectonic surveys, palaeontological, depositional and petrographical observations) with the aim to characterize the coastal
evolution of the sector over a wide time frame (Late Pleistocene and Holocene) and to recognize the geological indicators of
relative sea-level fluctuations.Neotectonic studies performed all along the coastal sector through the check of the present-day
height of marine notches and of the inner margin of marine terraces of Eutyrrhenian age allowed to assess the entity of post-
Tyrrhenian differential crustal movements in the area. The calculated rates of uplift confirm the relative stability of the area in
the last 125 ka and that the relative corrections introduced can be considered negligible in the reconstruction of sea-level rise in
the last thousand years.On the base of these considerations, the sea-level rise curve which has been drawn for the Holocene
through the radiometric dating (14C and U/Th) of submerged speleothems and Vermetid reefs is assumed to gain a regional
significance and to represent a good reference datum for the Central – Southern Mediterranean Sea. In addition, the sea-level rise
data are in good agreement with the predicted sea-level curves based on geophysical models previously applied to the same
study areas.
D 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Sea-level change; Neotectonic; Coastal evolution; Late Pleistocene; Holocene; Sicily

1. Introduction tions with Climate Processes and Vertical Crustal
Movement) included a study of past sea levels in
The objectives of the EC Project SELF II (SEa- order to provide indications on the long-term sea-
Level Fluctuations in the Mediterranean: Interac- level trends in the Mediterranean Sea and to further
the understanding of the recent and current pro-
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +39-6-3048-3955; fax: +39-6- cesses.
3048-4029.
Due to the geodynamical setting of the Mediterra-
E-mail address: fabrizio.antonioli@casaccia.enea.it nean Basin and to the marked tectonic deformation of
(F. Antonioli). its coastal tracts, which frequently exhibit evidence of

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