ABSTRACTS / RESUMES - Comitato Glaciologico Italiano

£85-10 ka, based on the stratigraphy and U/Th dating of
the coastal sediments). On the east-coast fans high sea levels
during the intervening interglacial and during the Holocene
caused erosion of the distal fan zones which led to
channel incision into the fan surfaces. On the west-coast
fans no such incision occurred, simply proximal incision
by small fanhead trenches. At least one minor phase of fan
sedimentation has occurred during the Holocene.
The fan sediments show increasing fluvial dominance with
time. Debris flows are largely restricted to the earliest phases
or to side inputs in the fan proximal zones. The contrasting
fan contexts have produced differing fan styles, with
telescopic fan morphology characteristic of the east-coast
and stacked morphology of the west-coast fans. These differences
are. reflected in the fan profiles, with steeper
proximal gradients dominating the east-coast fans, and extensive
lower gradient distal surfaces on the west-coast
fans. Fan morphometry, based on analysis of the residuals
from drainage area to fan area and gradient regressions, also
differentiates between the fan contexts.
Fan building phases appear to be controlled proximally by
sediment fed to the fans. The major sediment pulses were
climatically driven, occurring during global glacials and at
times of low sea levels, and caused fan progradation onto
the exposed foreshore. The intervening global interglacials
were times of little fan sedimentation, and on the east coast,
where high sea levels were able to erode the fan toes,
deep through-fan dissection ensued.
ULRIKE HASSLER, B. MAUZ & U. RADTKE
Late Pleistocene littoral sediments in Calabria
(Southern Italy): first results of luminescence
age determinations and morphostratigraphic meanings
Geographisches Institut, Universitaet Koeln, Albertus-Magnus-Platz,
D - 50923 Koeln, Germany
On the Crotone peninsula (Calabria) several marine terraces
are unconformably overlying the Plio- Pleistocene
clayey sediments of the Cenozoic Crotone Basin. The up to
15 meters thick littoral sediments of the terraces, situated
at altitudes between 240 and 5 m a.s.l., are characterised
by a siliciclasts-bearing carbonate facies giving evidence
for a repeated restoration of a reef-bearing nearshore environment.
Gliozzi (1987) used sedimentological, palaeontological
and structural analysis and age determination by
aminoacid racemisation and U-series dating techniques to
recognise the high sea level episodes of the oxygen isotope
stages 7, 5e, 5c and 5a in six morphological orders of terraces.
However, reasonable doubt on the stratigraphic attribution
of the deposits was given by the weak data of the
U-series dating (basing on travertine, calcarenite and mol-
luscs shells). Our study in the Crotone area aims to find
out, whether luminescence dating could help to verify the
correlations of the previous study. Furthermore, the presence
of the, although weak, independent age control,
should allow to assess the potential of luminescence dating
on Mediterranean littoral deposits.
Due to different materials used in the age determination
methods, samples could not be taken at the locations used
in the previous investigations. Instead, samples weretaken
from deposits in different altidudinal positions, which
could be correlated with the investigated outcrops by
structural and morphological field evidence.
The luminescence dating was carried out using different
methodological approaches each corresponding to the
composition and structure of the sampled horizon. Namely,
the single grain method (Lamothe, 1994) and the
multiple aliquot additive dose method were used on infrared
-stimulated (Ir-Os1) alkali feldspars. Thermoluminescence
(Tl) measurements on quartz were applied when no
alkali feldspars were available. The emissions were detected
in narrow wavelength bands (the 350-490 nm emission
of alkali feldspars and the 280-320 nm emission of quartz).
The dose rates were determined using Naa and Aas measurements
of radionuclides contents, B- and