Towards a new marine structural model of Italy

The exploitation of economic resources in marine environmentand the assessment of natural hazards press a greaterknowledge of the sea floor geology. Since the Structural Model ofItaly was published in the 1991 by the CNR, new data have beencollected concerning the marine geology of the sea floorsurrounding Italy, also by means of up to date technologies(digital seismics, SBP Chirp, Multibeam). Data collected duringthe last decades in the frame of research programs as CROPMARE, CARG, morpho-bathymetric survey of the Tyrrhenian Sea,MAGIC, allow investigating the submerged geological structureswith different temporal and spatial resolution. As consequence, atpresent marine geologists can draw geological maps wheredifferent geological features and related tectonic structures canbe highlighted: 1) the depth of the Moho discontinuity; 2) thedepth of the carbonate platform top; 3) the depth of theMessinian unconformity and the thickness of the Plio-Quaternarybasin infill; 4) the Late Quaternary depositional sequence; 5) themain morpho-structural features (volcanoes, canyons, slides andslumps). Geological maps containing all of this information allowto define the submerged stratigraphic and structural setting andto reconstruct the geological evolution of the Italian sea floors,helping in to assess the marine geological hazard. The criteria forrepresentation must be chosen so as to facilitate the correlationwith the adjacent emerged areas. A particular attention will bepaid to the late orogeny structures that controlled the Quaternarymorphogenesis and mostly responsible for the present daymorpho-structural setting of the Italian sea floor as well as theseismicity of this region. In this communication, a few geologicalmap examples coming from the Sicily offshore will be shown todebate the scale and the most appropriate methodologies to beused for the representation of a new structural model of theItalian sea floor.