Coastal versus inland aeolian deposition along the north-western coast of Sardinia

The north-western coast of Sardinia preserves some very thick sedimentary successions containing usually relatively thin beach deposits referred to the Last Interglacial high stand and aeolian deposits attributed to the time span between MIS 5 to MIS 3. Only in a very few places OSL dating revealed the existence of aeolian deposits attributed to the beginning of MIS 2 (Andreucci et al., 2014). The present-day coastline corresponds to the inner margin of a large coastal plain during the Last Glaciation. The investigation carried out in the framework of the new geological map of Italy allows the recognition of a dune field up to 5 km inland from the coast overlying alluvial plain sediments with weakly developed soils. According to the radiocarbon dating of the organic layers found in these soils, the aeolian facies was dated back to the Late Glacial period, between 19 and 13 ka. In this work the distribution of the aeolian sediments along the coast of north-western Sardinia has been investigated and the stratigraphic setting, facies analysis and chronology of the sediments cropping out in the Rio Serra dune field are presented, with the aim to constrain their chronological setting. For this purpose, new Luminescence dating are ongoing on the overlying aeolian deposits.