Ricerc@Sapienza

The Eocene-Oligocene transition marks a fundamental step in the evolution of the modern climate. This climate change and the consequent major oceanic reorganisation affected the global carbon cycle, whose dynamics across this crucial interval are far from being clearly understood. In this work, the upper Eocene to lower Oligocene δ13CCarb and δ13CTOC records of a shallow-water and a hemipelagic carbonate settings within the Central Mediterranean area have been studied and discussed.

The drowning of carbonate platforms is a fascinating topic because it may be induced by several concomitant factors. A key setting to investigate carbonate platform drowning is a foreland basin. The Nummulitic Limestone ramp developed in the foreland of the western Alps during the Bartonian, while the Lithothamnion and Bryozoan Limestone ramp deposited in the foreland of the central Apennines between the Burdigalian and Serravallian.

The Eocene-Oligocene Transition is a key interval in the evolution of the modern climate, representing the last greenhouse-icehouse transition faced by the Earth. Shallow-water carbonate systems hold essential information of the global changes related to the E-O Transition. In this work, we focus on the Majella Mountain carbonate ramp to identify the shallow-water sedimentary expression of the oceanographic and sea-level changes related to the E-O Transition, and to compare it with the deep-marine records and the coeval shallow-water successions.

During the Miocene, the upwelling is assumed to be important in the formation of many Mediterranean phosphate deposits in carbonate platform successions. There are different types of upwelling mechanisms such as equatorial upwellings, ice-edge upwellings and coastal upwellings. The carbonate platforms are mainly affected by wind-driven coastal upwelling systems. During upwelling season, the seawater in coastal areas is strongly density stratified and the permanent pycnocline rises inshore forming an inclined frontal layer.

Appraisal of the volumes of fluid in a carbonate reservoir will typically require a reliable predictive model. This can be achieved by combining studies of well-exposed carbonate successions with 3D models in order to obtain reliable quantitative data. In this paper, we present a detailed outcrop study and a 3D porosity model of a well-exposed Oligocene carbonate ramp (Salento Peninsula, southern Italy) to investigate the nature of small-scale facies and porosity heterogeneities.