Composizione e trasporto delle sabbie delle coste marine italiane

Abstract

This work focuses on the physical structure and processes of the Italian coasts and takes advantage of the original joint research recently carried out by the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Parma and the ENEA Marine Research Centre of Santa Teresa. On such base, several specific databases (e.g. Coastal Cells) were created and the available data (e.g. Morpho-sedimentological types) were adapted to the requirements of the research. This was accompanied by the production of a homogenous set of petrographic and granulometric data on beach sands of the Italian coasts. GIS technologies (geodatabase ©ESRI, ArcMap) were applied through extensively. These original data are complementary to the relevant literature identifying coastal petrographic provinces on numerous coastal tracts. The sampling of beach sands was then planned on the remaining part of the Italian coastline. A total of 137 samples were collected; 135 of them were analysed for granulometry and thin-section optical microscopy. These original analyses, integrated to the available data on coastal petrographic provinces, provide a quantitative assessment of the petrophysical characteristics of the Italian native beach sands.