Late Matuyama climate forcing on sedimentation at the margin of the southern Alps (Italy)

Abstract

The Pleistocene history of climate control on sedimentation in the Southern Alps-Po Plain system, northern Italy, was reconstructed using an integrated magnetostratigraphic, palynological, and petrographical approach on a 47-m-deep core. The core mainly consists of lacustrine sediments pertaining to the Bagaggera sequence, deposited at the foothills of the Southern Alps during the late Matuyama subchron (0.99-0.78 Ma). At that time, climate worsened globally and locally it caused the progradation of an alluvial fan unit onto the nearby Po Plain, triggering lake formation by damming of a tributary valley. These new data are used in conjunction with data from the literature to highlight and track the effects of climate forcing on sedimentation during the late Matuyama subchron in different orographic and geodynamic settings of the Southern Alps-Po Plain system as part of the greater Alpine area. We found that the episodes of alluvial fan and braidplam progradation observed in the southern foreland of the Alps during the late Matuyama global cooling seem broadly synchronous with the deposition of most of the so-called Gunz and Alterer Deckenschotter deposits in the northern forelands of the Alps as well as with the first major waxing of the Alpine valley glaciers, possibly around the Marine Isotope Stage 22 (~0.87 Ma).