Geology
When describing the geology of Calabria it is commonly referred to "The Calabrian Arc", the arc-shaped geographic domain extending from the southern part of the Basilicata Region up to the northeast of Sicily, the Peloritano Mountains (although some authors extend this domain from Naples in the North up to Palermo in the Southwest). The Calabrian area shows basement (crystalline and metamorphic rocks) of Paleozoic and younger ages, covered by (mostly Upper) Neogene sediments. Studies have revealed that these rocks comprise the upper Unit of a pile of thrust sheets which dominate the Apennines and the Sicilian Maghrebides.
The Neogene evolution of the Central Mediterranean system is dominated by the migration of the Calabrian Arc to the southeast, overriding the African Plate and its promontories (Argand, 1922; Boccaletti and Guazzone, 1972). The main tectonic elements of the Calabrian Arc are the Southern Apennines fold-and-thrust belt, the "Calabria-Peloritani", or simply Calabrian block and the Sicilian Maghrebides fold-and-thrust belt. The foreland area is formed by the Apulia Platform, which is part of the Adriatic Plate, and the Ragusa or Iblean Platform, which is an extension of the African Plate. These platforms are separated by the Ionian Basin. The Tyrrhenian oceanized basin is regarded as the back-arc basin. This subduction system therefore shows the southern plates of African affinity subducting below the northern plates of European affinity.
The geology of Calabria has been studied for more than a century. For details concerning the older literature, i.e. from before 1973, the reader is referred to the review of Ogniben (1973) . Ippolito (1959) presented a complete bibliography of the literature on the Calabrian geology as published up until that moment. Books, reviews and important "mile¬stones" concerning the geology of the Calabrian Arc are the following: Cortese (1895), Limanowski (1913), Quitzow (1935), Caire et al. (1960), Caire (1961), Grandjacquet et al. (1961), Ogniben (1969, 1973 ), Caire (1970, 1975, 1978 ), Burton (1971), Amodio-Morelli et al. (1976), Dubois (1976), Grandjacquet and Mascle (1978), Moussat (1983), van Dijk (1992), and van Dijk et al. (2000). The earlier works were mainly dedicated to the evolution of the basement rocks of the area. The Neogene sedimentary successions were merely regarded as "post-orogenic" infill of "neo-tectonic" tensional features. In the course of time, however, a shift can be observed in the temporal significance of these terms, from post-Eocene to post-Early Miocene to post-middle Pleistocene.
The area is seismically and volcanically highly active. This is generally ascribed to the re-establishment of an equilibrium after the latest (mid-Pleistocene) deformation phase. Some authors believe that the subduction process is still ongoing, which is a matter of debate (van Dijk & Scheepers, 1995).
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