• journal_title：Bollettino della Societa Geologica Italiana
• Contributor：Maria Luisa Putignano ; Marcello Schiattarella
• Publisher：The Electrochemical Society
• Date：2008-
• Format：text/html
• Language：en
• journal_abbrev：Bollettino della Societa Geologica Italiana
• issn：2038-1719
• volume：127
• issue：3
• firstpage：477
• section：Geomorphology

Southern Italy underwent a poly-phase tectonic history from late Oligocene to Quaternary times, after the positive inversion of the Apulian segment of the African Mesozoic passive margin. "External" structural units derived from this important palaeogeographic domain and their deformation started in the early Miocene, when the Liguride ophiolite-bearing accretionary prism and the Sicilide Complex (i.e. the assemblage of the "Internal units") overthrust the westernmost portion of the continental margin. This was articulated in a series of platforms and basins where also more restricted paleogeographic elements, such as emerged zones of a platform, structural highs, seamounts and narrow troughs, were present in different times. Monte Motola is a sharp and narrow positive morphostructure made of Mesozoic shallow-water carbonates surrounded by Cretaceous to Miocene "internal" clayey units, largely affected by landslides. This area is located in the inner part of the Cilento promontory and bordered to the east by the Quaternary intermontane basin of the Vallo di Diano. Although Monte Motola has lithology and elevations similar to the calcareous massifs located to the north (Alburni Mts) and to the south (Mt. Cervati), it is morphologically separated from the other mountains by two narrow troughs in which shaly and marly units crop outs, forming a contrasting soft landscape. The calcareous ridge of Monte Motola-Monte Vivo is in fact completely bordered by upper Pliocene to Quaternary transpressional and extensional faults that--together with the activity of the fluvial net--allowed the exhumation of its Mesozoic core. The progressive lateral migration of part of an ancient hydrographic network, expressed by a meandered and weakly intrenched stream and marked by several other relics of fluvial channels, related to the organization of erosional land surfaces in different orders as the erosion base level changed, allowed to reconstruct the main steps of exhumation and morphological evolution of the ridge and to calculate the uplift/erosion rates during the last 2.5 Ma. The mean value is ca. 0.6 mm/a, in good agreement with those calculated in previous contributions for the axial zone of the southern Apennines. This study also revealed that Monte Motola is a zone of strain concentration in the context of the late Pliocene transpression which affected a lager sector of the southern Apennines. Quaternary tectonics inherited such a peculiarity, by amplifying the uplift and the separation of the mountain by the rest of the relief. The anisotropy acquired during Cretaceous times and caused by palaeotectonic extensional faulting seems to be the reason for the differential behaviour of the study area with respect to the adjacent massifs. Indeed, in the Mesozoic palaeogeographic scenario Monte Motola could have represented a minor structural high bordered by normal (or transtensional) faults, probably characterized by moderate offsets but yet able to generate a textural grain that since influenced the successive local tectonic history.