A Warming sea and Coastal retreats around Mediterranean basin Wa.Co.Med

The ongoing climate change and sea level rise have already and will dramatically modify the coastal physiography worldwide. This phenomenon will have a deep impact on coastal life and human activities, wildlife habitats, including higher floods and storm frequency and intensity. For example, numerous global-scale models suggest that a temperature increase of 2°C with respect to the "pre-fossil fuel era" will drive a sea level rise of about 1m in 2100, causing drowning of ca. 5500 kmq of plain and complete retreat of many barrier-lagoon systems along the Italian coasts. Nevertheless, when applied to specific areas these models need to be calibrated based on regional and local scale peculiarities for a more accurate definition of the expected scenario. This is particularly relevant in closed basins, such as the Mediterranean, where human activities and climate change effects are most relevant but whose dynamics is peculiar with respect to oceanic environments; non-anthropically modified environmental "background" conditions needs to be defined as a benchmark for modelling. Moreover, understanding how these coastal sedimentary systems reacted in the past in response to eustatic(sea level, sedimentation rate and glacio-hydrostatic adjustment) variations is crucial for impact and risk assessment. Wa.Co.Med project aims to gain new field data to improve existing climate-eustatic predictive models for the western Mediterranean basin. Specifically, it seeks to:

1. obtain accurate Late Quaternary to current times (130 to 1 ka ago) total eustatic fluctuation rates based on Marine Isotopic Stage 5e (~129 to 116 ka) sedimentary sequences and multiple Holocene submerged beachrocks and paleobeaches along three type areas along Sardinia, Metaponto and Sicilian coasts. To improve accuracy of the existing sea level curves at high- temporal resolution of the sedimentary wedge is crucial. All the target areas show evidences of neotectonics and of uplift at different rates. As a consequence, local tectonic, uplift rates and peculiar GIA values needs to be defined and compared.

2. reconstruct the main sea water parameters (temperature, salinity) of the Last Interglacial Stage (MIS5e) using geochemical proxies (oxygen isotope ratios, trace element composition and stable/organic carbon) and compare them with present-day shallow water conditions. The MIS5e is an ideal case study because it was only slightly warmer than today, and without any important anthropogenic input. Fossil fauna collected from selected Sardinian coastal successions developed during the MIS5e will be analyzed to get main sea water information. We select taxa that were abundant during the MIS5e and are still living in the nearshore nowadays allowing us to model the future variations.

3. based on climate-derived data, Wa.Co.Med will try to yield, an extremely accurate total eustatic curve for the studied areas to be use as benchmark for west Mediterranean forward models.

Research units:

• Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Principal Investigator Stefano Andreucci
• Università degli Studi di Sassari, Associated Investigator Vincenzo Pascucci
• Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Associated Investigator Marcello Tropeano

 Call:
PRIN 2022 PNRR

Project duration:
24 months

Main ERC field:
PE - Physical Sciences and Engineering

ERC subfields

• PE10_12 Sedimentology, soil science, palaeontology, earth evolution
• PE10_5 Geology, tectonics, volcanology
• PE10_6 Palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology

Keywords
sea level curve, Sedimentology of deposits related to rocky shores and strandplains, Luminescence dating, Quaternary stratigraphy, Neotectonic, environmental geochemistry

De Luca M., Casini L., Cossu G., De Falco G., Gamberi F., Marras P., Santonastaso A. Stelletti M., Pascucci V. (2025) Geomorphology of the NE Sardinian continental shelf between Olbia and Posada (Italy). Journal of Maps, 21(1).