Structural map of seas surrounding Italy

The structural map of seas surrounding Italy supplements the Structural Model of Italy (composed of six sheets at 1:500,000 scale published in subsequent years: Bigi et alii, 1990a, 1990b, 1991a, 1991b, 1992a, 1992b), by adding new information on the submerged, seafloor areas. Its objective is to gather information collected during the last decades and convey it as a single map product. Starting from the Structural Model of Italy and the Neotectonic map of Italy (Ambrosetti et alii,1987), new data have been included from publications as well as from scientific surveys carried out by the Authors or by the Authors’ Institutions. This new map is made available in both printed and digital format. The digital version is an OGC standard database (doi: 10.15161/oar.it/212660) for storage and direct use of vector geospatial features and tabular data that can be used in order to access data sources and other information. It provides an overview of existing data enabling further detailed investigations to be planned to study natural hazards and to support marine spatial planning and management. The launch in 2009 of the European Project EMODnet (European Marine Observation and Data Network), provided the opportunity to start systematically organizing marine data and summarising them in digital maps freely available on the EMODnet website (https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en). In 2013 the Geological Survey of Italy invited geologists who had been involved in studies on tectonics to participate in a discussion concerning a possible update of the Structural Model of Italy. The discussion proceeded through meetings organized remotely and via special sessions at conferences, such as the 2013 AIQUA (Italian Association for the Study of the Quaternary) Congress in Naples. During the following years the Geological Survey of Italy joined the consortium carrying out the EMODnet Geology Project, providing products related to all the planned data layers and started to coordinate a work package focused on geological events including earthquakes, volcanoes, submarine landslides, fluid emissions, tsunamis and Quaternary tectonics. This Project provided an opportunity to collate, standardize and spatially and semantically harmonize (i.e. according to European Commission instructions, to organize features attributes in order to obtain homogeneous Europe wide representation of data across countries borders) data from submerged areas to be represented on digital maps. At the same time, it allowed the establishment of a permanent group of Italian public research Institutions (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto di Scienze Marine - CNR-ISMAR; Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia - INGV; Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale - OGS, Universities of Genova, Palermo, RomaTRE, Trieste), that conduct marine geology studies or have specific expertise in the topics included in the Project. The group has been cooperating in order to make the Italian contribution to the project as complete and integrated as possible; besides Project products, the work carried out also suggested that an update of the Structural Model of Italy concerning submerged areas would have been possible. Emerged areas were beyond the scope of the Project; however, in the last two years, a sister project carried on by a research group promoted by INGV has been working on an update of the Structural Model for emerged areas as well, which will be a future publication. EMODnet Geology is currently into its fifth phase and the list of tectonic features included in the mapping project, as well as of their attributes, has been refined through the years according to the foreseen, higher resolution, data. Features included in the map (superimposed on shaded relief bathymetry) are tectonic elements (faults, folds axes, high-deformation crustal zones), earthquakes, submerged volcanic structures and rocky outcrops, main onshore volcanic deposits and tectonic elements; whereas the inset maps include thickness of the Plio-Quaternary succession, shelfbreak and foot of the continental slope, depth of the Moho discontinuity and heat flow. The top of Messinian evaporites was considered for inclusion in the map as a potential reference layer, but the idea was dismissed as being impractical, as well as the direct identification of crustal domains. Geomorphic features were not considered in the map. However, the major physiographic discontinuities (shelfbreak and foot of the slope) are reported in an inset map. Volcanic submarine structures (seamounts) were considered as rock outcrops focusing on their age and lithology rather than geomorphology because they provide insight into the tectonic evolution of the basins and its timing.