Provenance and accommodation pathways of late Quaternary sediments in the deep-water northern Ionian Basin, southern Italy

The northern Calabria along the southeastern coast of Italy provides a favorable setting inwhich to study complete transects from continental to deep-marine environments. The presentnorthern Ionian Calabrian Basin is a wedge-top basin within the modern foreland-basin system ofsouthern Italy. The Ionian margin of northern Calabria consists of a moderately developed fluvialsystems, the Crati and Neto rivers, and diverse smaller coastal drainages draining both the Calabriacontinental block (i.e., Sila Massif) and the southern Apennines thrust belt (i.e., Pollino Massif). Themain-channel sand of the Crati and Neto rivers is quartzofeldspathic with abundant metamorphic andplutonic lithic fragments (granodiorite, granite, gneiss, phyllite and sedimentary lithic fragments).Sedimentary lithic fragments were derived from Jurassic sedimentary successions of the LongobuccoGroup. The mud samples contain mostly phyllosilicates, quartz, calcite, feldspars and dolomite. Tracesof gypsum are present in some samples. The I-S mixed layers, 10 Å-minerals (illite and micas), chloriteand kaolinite are the most abundant phyllosilicates, whereas smectite and chlorite/smectite mixedlayers are in small amounts. The geochemical signatures of the muds reflect a provenancecharacterized by both felsic and mafic rocks with a significant input from carbonate rocks.Furthermore, the degree of source-area weathering was most probably of low intensity rather thanmoderately intense because CIA values for the studied mud samples are low. Extrapolation of the meanerosion budget from 1 to 25 Ma suggests that at least 5 to 8 km of crust have been removed from theCalabrian orogenic belt and deposited in the marine basins. The Calabrian microplate played animportant role in the dynamic evolution of southern Italian fossil and modern basins, representing thekey tectonic element of the entire orogenic belt.