The contribution of marine geology to the knowledge of marine coastal environment off the Campania Region (Southern Italy): the geological map n. 502 "Agropoli" (southern Campania)

The marine geological mapping of the geological map n. 502 "Agropoli", located offshore the Cilento Promontory is here described, particularly referring to water depths included among the - 30 and - 200 m isobaths. Geological and geophysical data on the continental shelf and slope offshore the southern Campania region have been collected in the study area, bounded northwards by the Salerno Gulf and southwards by the Policastro Gulf. Among them, it is worth mentioning a high resolution Multibeam bathymetry, allowing for the construction of a marine DEM and Sidescan Sonar profiles. The latter ones, merged to the bathymetry, have represented the base for the marine geologic cartography. The integrated geologic interpretation of seismic, bathymetric and Sidescan Sonar data has been suitably calibrated by sea bottom samples. The morpho-structures and the seismic sequences, overlying the outcrops of acoustic basement mapped in the marine areas of the geological map have been studied in detail using multichannel and single-channel seismics. The interpretation of seismic profiles has been a valid support for the reconstruction of the stratigraphic and structural setting of the Quaternary continental shelf successions and the outcrops of rocky acoustic basement in correspondence to the Punta Licosa morpho-structural high. These areas result from the seaward prolongation of the stratigraphic and structural units, widely cropping out in the surrounding emerged sector of the Cilento Promontory. The realized cartographic approach, perhaps experimental, is based on the recognition of laterally coeval depositional systems, interpreted in the frame of the system tracts of the Late Quaternary depositional sequence.