During the late Quaternary, in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere, the cyclical alternation of erosional and depositional processes was the dominant response of the fluvial systems to climate change. Fluvial processes interchanged as a function of orbital, eccentricity-driven climate cycles to generate - favored by regional tectonic uplift - typical staircases of staked fill terraces. Only few studies focused on quantifying the response of fluvial processes to low magnitude, short-term climate variability during the last glacial-interglacial cycle. This project deals with the exploration of the geomorphic response of the fluvial systems to the short-term climate variability, combining both process-based and historical geomorphological approaches. The northern Apennines offer a unique opportunity for answering this scientific question because preserves well-developed fluvial terraces, from late Pleistocene up to Holocene in age, due to repeated cut and fill episodes that interchanged during the last 75 ka. Traditional field survey, remote sensing, quantitative land surface analysis and landscape evolution modelling are planned along some key river valleys draining the northern Apennines (43°- 44° N). Specific goals are: 1) description of the main terrace depositional phases, absolute geochronological collocation and along-valley morpho-stratigraphic correlations; 2) description of types and rates of the post-glacial valley entrenchment; 3) discrimination of the components due to climate, active tectonics and landslide erosion in the terrace generation; 4) identification of the regional-to-global correspondence of the recognized morpho-evolutionary steps with the acknowledged climate events within the Mediterranean area. Results are expected to contribute to the knowledge on the geomorphic response to climate change, enhancing the understanding about the role of global warming on the future waterscape transformations at the mid latitude.
Since the last two decades of the twentieth century many studies have been concluding that human activities were altering climatic and environmental conditions over very short time scales. The stratigraphic record is widely considered the only empirical record of global change (Burke et al., 1990), consequently studies of the intensity and frequency of Quaternary global changes were perceived as a means for providing a framework for either observed historical trends and projected future scenarios. Fluvial environments are critical to human activities, and ancient fluvial deposits are important repositories for hydrocarbons, groundwater and other resources. Studies of the dynamics of ¿fluvial systems at different space-time scales, and their responses to external or allogenic controls, consequently, have an extensive range of applications.
Results of the planned study will provide advances in the long-term landscape modelling, based on the adopted combined geomorphological methodology, which is a fusion of both process and historical approaches. Although the project activities will provide results for key areas in northern Apennines, the expected outcomes will contribute to enhance the overall knowledge on the techniques for reconstructing the timing and style of the morphoevolution of transient landscapes at different space-time scales.
Results are expected to contribute to the knowledge on the geomorphic response to climate change, enhancing the understanding about the role of global warming on the waterscape transformations at the mid latitude.
In order to achieve the general purposes of the research project, the activities will include traditional field and desktop investigations, as well as a recently introduced (still being tested, landscape evolution modelling techniques). In this regard, outcomes of this project are expected to provide a methodology to support landscape modelling at different space-time scales. Finally, the research project is expected to provide new dataset useful for facing the big challenge of perform consistent long-term landscape models through multi-faceted geomorphic analyses.