Occurrence and origin of soils with andic properties in Calabria (southern Italy)

Andic-like soils, along with Andosols, have previously been reported in non-volcanic ecosystems of the coastaland mountainous areas of the Calabria region (southern Italy), but little is known about their properties, soil formationprocesses and volcanic source areas. Chemical, mineralogical, microscopic, sub-microscopic and magneticanalyses were carried out on 8 soils which were selected from the major Calabrian geological sectors in order toassess relationships between parent material and bedrock. Soil chemical properties revealed an occurrence ofandic or vitric properties in the studied soils as a whole, and the optical microscopy enabled to identify volcanicglass, micro-pumices and soil isotropic matrix, clearly indicating volcanic inputs. Three groups of soils, identifiedon the basis of the degree of andic properties, showed rather homogeneous also in terms of chemical properties,clay mineralogy and land use, aswell aswith regard to micromorphology and magnetic susceptibility. Part of theintra-group similarities was a consequence of similar distances between sites and volcanic source area, as suggestedby the correlations found between ferrihydrite content, andic (i.e. % of ammonium oxalate extractableAl + 0.5 Fe and phosphate retention) and magnetic properties vs. distances from several Sicilian districts. Theelemental composition obtained by SEM/EDS analyses of soil glass fragments supported these findings and relatedthe origin of most of the studied soils to the high potassium calc-alkaline magmatism of the southernmostEolian Islands (mainly Lipari and Vulcano), except for soils from the marine terraces of northern Calabria(PRA) and the Aspromonte Massif (DEL), which were both linked, albeit uncertainly, to Campanian volcanism.Soil magnetic properties were significantly (0.79**) correlated to the andic properties, so confirming the highperformance of magnetic susceptibility as low cost proxy for the identification of volcanic constituents.