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The study of the past is of fundamental importance in understanding the processes that control the functioning of the Earth System and the interaction between ecosystems, human society and natural variability. The Quaternary scientist produces a variety of proxies derived from the investigation of natural, archaeological and historical records covering all time scales of the history of Planet Earth, including current dynamics, and with special focus to extend the calibrations to not instrumentally registe-red time spans. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted not only the vulnerability of our world but it also has made plain for all to see the critical role of humans. On the other hand, it has produced the unexpected conditions for a large-scale experiment on the impact of sudden reduced human activities, pointing to the potential for recovery of the natural environment. In this review, we examine how data from the recent past can provide tools to understand the events taking place today and to forecast their deve-lopments in the future.

This study represents the first attempt to combine the geomorphological characteristics of the island of Ustica with the human settlements that have been established during prehistory, with the purpose of reconstructing the interactions between communities and the natural environment from the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age (6th - 1st millennia B.C.). Ustica is a small island in the Southern Tyrrhenian Sea, visible but far (~55 km) from the northern coast of western Sicily. Its rugged volcanic nature, remodeled and enriched by the sea, offered to the first colonizers a wide repertoire of opportunities and challenges. This island can be treated as an ideal “laboratory” to understand how settlers, taking their first steps towards the foundation of organized communities, were able to seize opportunities or succumb to obstacles. The review of archaeological research until now carried out in Ustica, integrated with geomorphological data and other biogeographical indicators, offers a picture of the prehistory of Ustica in which human presence is continuous and distributed in various sites of the island characterized by different physiographic characteristics. There are phases dominated by the choice of naturally protected sites and phases in which settlements expands on open land, suitable for agricultural use. Where the archaeological evidence is scarce, the geomorphological peculiarities allow us to decipher the vocations and characters of a human settlement. The study leads to an open question: in the Middle Bronze Age, after about five thousand years of uninterrupted habitation of Ustica, which factors, geological, social, or other, induced the early communities to abandon the island, without returning there for about eight centuries, until the Hellenistic-Roman age?

Natural processes and human activities are strongly connected, and sometimes con icting, in the evolution of coastal and transitional environments. The strong anthropic pressure on coastal regions, together with the e ects of a changing climate, demands nowadays more pressingly for e cient tools to characterise and predict the behaviour of such systems in order to de ne appropriate response strategies. This requires a deep understanding of the connections among di erent drivers and di erent scales, a multidisciplinary challenge in which heterogeneous data, approaches and scales need to be framed within a consistent dynamical description. To this aim, a speci c research line was dedicated to “Coastal Vulnerability to Erosion and Sea Level Rise” within the RITMARE Project, supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research with the purpose of integrating the Italian Marine community in shared research elds in the period 2012-2017. The activities carried out in this framework have been moving along interconnected branches tackling the themes related with sea level rise, ocean modelling, and geomorphological assessment in present conditions and in di erent climate change scenarios, with an eye on the exploitation of marine sand as a strategic resource. In this contribution we review the main outcomes of this multidisciplinary and coordinated research. Besides discussing the advances and the possibilities from state-of-the art technologies and methodologies, we point out that a coordinated use of the described tools should be promoted in the design of survey and monitoring activities, as well as in the exploitation of already collected data. Expected outcomes of this strategy include the implementation of improved policies and infrastructures for coastal protection, anked by reliable short-term forecasting systems and e cient rapid response protocols, in the framework of an integrated coastal planning at the multi-decadal scale.

In this paper, we present and discuss the spatial distribution of Tidal notches (Tn) along the western sector of Adriatic Sea as a marker of the coastal stability during late Holocene. Specifically, a 3.97 km long coastal reach at the Mt. Conero area has been investigated in relation to its geological and geomorphological pecularieties such as: i) active, low rates uplift; ii) active coastal plunging cliff; iii) diffuse gravity-induced instability of the rocky cliff and consequent presence of coastal landslides of different type, size and state of activity. The identification and location of Tn has been conducted on July 2016 by means of a snorkel survey along a route encompassing the toe of the Conero coastal cliff, allowing the investigation of the tidal zone and recognition of the morphotypes above and below the sea level. Time-lapse images with frame rate of 1 s were collected along the entire route. The best quality frames were used to precisely clusterize the coastal geomorphological features, and to precisely locate the recognized Tn. The snorkel survey was supported by detailed geomorphological surveys and geo-structural investigations from inland. This multifaceted approach allowed to identify and precisely locates Tn, other than to establish relationships among their morphometric features and other specific coastal morphotypes recognized in the field. Tns have been observed for the first time in the study area. Although the rocky coastal cliff is affected by active uplift and several active landslides of different types, sizes and depth, the Tn location and elevation suggests that i) late Holocene vertical deformations due to tectonic are negligible for the whole coastal sector analysed; ii) gravitaty-induced vertical deformations involving bedrock are negligible during at least the last couple of centuries in the coastal stretches where they are preserved.

We depict the relative sea-level rise scenarios for the year 2100 from eight areas of the Italian peninsula. Our estimates are based on the Rahmstorf (2007) and IPCC-AR5 reports 2013 for the RCP-8.5 scenarios (www.ipcc.ch) of climate change, adjusted for the rates of vertical land movements (isostasy and tectonics). These latter are inferred from the elevation of MIS 5.5 deposits and from late Holocene sea-level indicators, matched against sea-level predictions for the same periods using the glacio-hydro-isostatic model of Lambeck et al. (2011). We focus on a variety of tectonic settings: the subsiding North Adriatic coast (including the Venice lagoon), three tectonically stable in Sardinia coastal plains (Oristano, Colledonia and Cagliari coastal plain), Marche (Tronto), Abruzzo (Pescara and Sangro coastal areas), Apulia (Lesina), Granelli (Sicily), and Marina di Campo (Tuscany) and the slightly uplifting Taranto coastal plain. Maps of ooding scenarios are shown on high-resolution Digital Terrain Models mostly based on Lidar data. The expected relative sea-level rise by 2100 will change dramatically the present-day morphology, potentially ooding up to about 6000 km2 of coastal plains at elevations close to present-day sea level. The subsequent loss of land will impact the environment and local infrastructures, suggesting land planners and decision makers to take into account these scenarios for a cognizant coastal management. Our method developed for the Italian coast can be applied worldwide in other coastal areas expected to be a ected by marine ingression due to global climate change.

The submerged sill in the Strait of Messina, which is located today at a minimum depth of 81 m below sea level (bsl), represents the only land connection between Sicily and mainland Italy (and thus Europe) during the last lowstand when the sea level locally stood at about 126 m bsl. Today, the sea crossing to Sicily, although it is less than 4 km at the narrowest point, faces hazardous sea conditions, made famous by the myth of Scylla and Charybdis. Through a multidisciplinary research project, we document the timing and mode of emergence of this land connection during the last 40 kyr. The integrated analysis takes into consideration morphobathymetric and lithological data, and relative sea-level change (both isostatic and tectonic), resulting in the hypothesis that a continental land bridge lasted for at least 500 years between 21.5 and 20 cal ka BP. The emergence may have occurred over an even longer time span if one allows for seafloor erosion by marine currents that have lowered the seabed since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Modelling of palaeotidal velocities shows that sea crossings when sea level was lower than present would have faced even stronger and more hazardous sea currents than today, supporting the hypothesis that earliest human entry into Sicily most probably took place on foot during the period when the sill emerged as dry land. This hypothesis is compared with an analysis of Pleistocene vertebrate faunas in Sicily and mainland Italy, including a new radiocarbon date on bone collagen of an Equus hydruntinus specimen from Grotta di San Teodoro (23–21 cal ka BP), the dispersal abilities of the various animal species involved, particularly their swimming abilities, and the Palaeolithic archaeological record, all of which support the hypothesis of a relatively late land-based colonization of Sicily by Homo sapiens.

The increasing awareness of the potential threats acting on the coastal regions, combined with the intense anthropic pressure and the broad variety of socio-economic drivers acting on these systems, bestowed progressively stronger emphasis to the development of sound planning and management policies. The assessment and the formulation of plans for the response to coastal morphological vulnerability is a multidisciplinary challenge, in which different typology of information, approaches and scales need to be integrated and framed within a consistent dynamical description. To this aim, within the RITMARE National Flagship Project, a specific research line on “Coastal Vulnerability to Erosion and Relative Sea level rise in climate change scenarios” was activated with reference to the Adriatic-Ionian region (Eastern Mediterranean Sea). The activities, supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research 2016-18, move along three interconnected branches, namely: 1) Assessment of vulnerability to relative sea level rise in the Adriatic-Ionian region, in present conditions and in different climate change scenarios; 2) Development of high-resolution oceanographic modelling tools for the description of meteo-marine climate and sediment transport at different scales and rapid response intervention protocols for the evaluation of the impact of erosive events on sandy sediments; 3) Identification of possible geomorphological setting scenarios and definition of intervention strategies, with special care to the exploitment of marine sand as a strategic resource. The work provides an overview of the strategy underlying the Research Line and present preliminary results and main achievements. Next steps will be aiming to pave the way towards a road map for an integrated observational and modelling approach for monitoring and managing the erosion and marine ingression risk throughout Italian coasts, striving to bridge the cultural and methodological gaps between the scientific and administrative sectors active in the coastal management field.

In the last years, the activities of Working Groups (WGs), in the framework of Italian Association of Physical Geography and Geomorphology (AIGeo), were aimed at the new issue of the legend of the Italian Geomorphological Map. The activities were performed keeping in mind the necessity: 1) to add new symbols because the great progress made in geomorphology, in terms of new knowledge on geomorphological processes and landforms, after the first issue of the legend in 1994; 2) to have a legend usable with large scale maps, suitable for applied purposes; 3) to create a legend usable with softwares (GIS environment, etc). The WG on Coastal Morphodynamics contributed to this work, as well, promoting, through meetings and workshops, the debate among the Italian coastal geomorphologists on the approach needed to produce a modern geomorphological legend. The classic dichotomy forms-processes used in the geomorphological mapping is often based to static concepts, especially when applied to marine and coastal areas, affected by fast dynamic events, sometimes paroxysmal. We present the new geomorphological legend to represent both coastal and underwater contexts, aimed to the improvement of classic geomorphological legends. The main goal of the work was the production of a legend suitable to clarify the importance and the need of representing landforms in the context ofthe Quaternary evolution, as well as from more recent or modern processes.

Coastal limestones are characterized by a typical set of morphologies throughout the world, related to a combination of physical, chemical, and biological processes, the relative importance of each depends on geographical and local conditions. In tropical and temperate areas biological processes are dominant, whereas at high latitudes physical abrasion becomes more important. The morphology of limestone coasts depends on a wide set of interrelated processes that are locally contingent and, therefore, cannot be described by a global scheme.

The submerged Sill in the Messina Strait, which is located at a depth of -81 m m.s.l., represents the only possibile connection between Calabria and Sicily during the last lowstand, when the sea level was at about -126 m m.s.l. This multidisciplinary research aim at documenting times and modes the bridge between Calabria and Sicily was emerged, during the last 40 ka BP. The analysis carried out on morphobathymetric, lithological and relative sea level change (both isostatic and tectonic) data allow to hypothesize the continental bridge emerged at least between 21.5 ka and 20 ka cal BP. Moreover, considering erosion processes due to very strong marine currents, it could be emerged for a longer time span. This hypothesis is supported by anthropological and mammalofauna data, together with 14C dating on Equus hydruntinus from San Teodoro Cave. © 2012 Società Geologica Italiana, Roma.

This study was conducted within the framework of the “Coastal Morphodynamics” Working Group (WG) of the Italian Association of physical Geography and Geomorphology (AIGeo), according to the Institute for the Protection and Environmental Research (ISPRA) for the updating of the legend for the “Geomorphological Map of Italy”. The WG deals with the legend for the coastal areas, focusingits work on marine, lagoon and aeolian landforms, processes and deposits. In particular, the legend aims to classify coastal landforms in order to contribute to hazard and risk assessment,for supportingland-use planning and management. The legend allows the mapping of each landform in function of its genesis as well as its evolution and present dynamics, providing information about morphological characteristics at small and large scales. The relict morphological features and the active ones are reported along with the quantitative parameters useful for the description of the present wave/climate conditions and morphodynamics. As a result of the activities and experiments carried out by the “Coastal Morphodynamics” AIGeo WG during the last years, some examples of coastal geomorphological mappings at different scales (1:5,000 and 1:25,000) have been developed and are presented in this paper. The maps focus both on littoral plains and rocky coast dynamics as well as on the interactions with anthropic modifications.

Understanding past sea-level change plays an important role in determining the underlying causes, and also allows the extrapolation of past sea levels to locations and epochs for which there are no instrumental data. A compilation of global sea-level estimates based on deep-sea oxygen isotope ratios at millennial-scale resolution or higher was published since ‘70. These global sea level curves do not take in account isostasy and tectonics. Observed sea level change can be reconstructed from dated fossils, coral reef terraces, speleothems, emerged and forming terraces on coastal areas, archaeological and other markers well connected with sea level. Because of the lack of coral reefs in the Mediterranean sea, results on late Quaternary sea level changes have been difficult to obtain in comparison with typical sites such as Barbados, the Huon Peninsula, Tahiti, Florida and others. On the contrary the very low tidal range of Mediterranean seas offers a good opportunity to produce precise observations and considerations on climatic change. As regard the last highstand (Holocene), sea level change is the sum of eustatic, glacio-hydro-isostatic, and tectonic factors. The first is time-dependent while the latter two also vary with location. This means that at the same time slices the relative sea level (the sum of 3 different movements) should be different in different coastlines. Coastal settlements and maritime installations built in antiquity provide important insights into sea-level changes during past millennia. Reconstructions of historical sea-level change using archaeological coastal sites are particularly effective in the Mediterranean (continua...)

During the last decade several papers have been published to estimate the relative sea-level change from coastal archaeological indicators in many locations of the Italian coasts and the Mediter-ranean Sea. Anyway, the use of the archaeological information has been poorly focused for Middle Ages and the Bronze Age, due to a few of available coastal installations for these periods. In this paper, we focus on two areas of the Mediterranean, namely the coasts of Malta island and Bari, in Apulia (Southern Italy), that displays coastal archaeological markers of the Bronze age and Middle ages, respectively. The elevation of the selected markers were compared against the latest model prediction of Lambeck et al. (2011). Our observations indicate that Malta is tectonically stable or slightly subsiding at smaller rates. The palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the coastlines at different time windows for his area, are in agreement with the timing of the mammals colonization of the island, occurred during Pleistocene. For Apulia, we show and discuss an archaeological maker of the Middle Ages, to reconstruct the story of the sea level changes in the last 1000 years at the St. Nicholas Basilica, built in 1087 AD along the coast of Bari. Since this coastal area is unaffected by significant vertical tectonic motion during the last 125 ky, our data detail the timing of the relative sea level rise since the Middle Ages and can be used to improve the predicted sea level curve for this region during the last 1000 years.

The accumulation of large boulders related to large waves generated by tsunami and extreme storm events have been observed in different areas of the Mediterranean Sea. A multidisciplinary study has been carried out on a large boulder deposit located between Armier Bay and Ahrax Point on the NE coast of Malta., peer-reviewed

Le ricostruzioni dei livelli eustatici passati e le previsioni future si basano soprattutto su modelli geofisici che valutano l’aggiustamento della superficie terrestre al variare delle masse glacio-isostatiche. Uno dei punti deboli di questo approccio č spesso il limitato numero di punti di controllo che confrontino i dati predetti dai modelli con le realtŕ di terreno. Per superare questo ostacolo, negli ultimi anni sono stati raccolti numerosi dati, avviando nuove ricerche sul campo e catalogando le informazioni pregresse tramite l’analisi della letteratura esistente, anche molto locale e di difficile reperimento [ad es. Antonioli et al., 2009]. Il progetto “Studio delle variazioni eustatiche e della subsidenza in Alto Adriatico negli ultimi 130.000 anni attraverso indicatori geomorfologici, stratigrafici e geoarcheologici”, finanziato nel 2010 dall’Universitŕ di Padova, ha tra i suoi obiettivi quello di realizzare un database che raccolga gli indicatori relativi ai livelli marini olocenici. Il database č stato denominato Su&So (Subsidence & Sea-level Observations), che in molti dialetti alto adriatici significa “su e giů”. Questa banca dati č pensata per integrarsi con quella del progetto INQUA MEDFLOOD (MEDiterranean sea-level change and projection for future FLOODing, www.medflood.org), costruita per l’intero Mediterraneo. Lungo la costa bassa tra Monfalcone e il delta del Po gli indicatori maggiormente considerati sono i depositi lagunari che ricoprono in onlap la pianura alluvionale preesistente. Essi sono piuttosto diffusi e vengono ritenuti ben rappresentativi del livello marino esistente durante la loro deposizione, con un errore massimo associato tra -2 e +0, 5 m. Indicatori simili sono presenti lungo la costa rocciosa dell’Istria, specie nelle valli a rias, parzialmente riempite da depositi paralici olocenici, come nel caso dei fiumi Mirna, Raša e delle baie di Pirano e Capodistria. Lungo la costa occidentale, il confronto tra aree diverse, anche se vicine fra loro, evidenzia il peso delle variabili geologiche nella risposta eustatica locale, in particolare la compattazione differenziale dei depositi olocenici e i diversi tassi di deformazione crostale. Per stimare i tassi di subsidenza tettonica su lungo termine, e rendere piů evidenti le deformazioni oloceniche, sono stati realizzati alcuni carotaggi fino a 105 m di profonditŕ in modo da valutare la quota dei depositi lagunari del MIS 5.e. Tra i nuovi dati sono di particolare interesse le misure condotte sui marker stratigrafici e geoarcheologici connessi all’etŕ del Bronzo Recente e Finale (1350-1000 a.C.), che consentono di ricostruire la curva RSL per un periodo finora poco analizzato.

Two Bronze Age human settlements of the Western Karthaliny Basin (Transcaucasia region, Georgia) were studied using a multidisciplinary approach. Satellite data (Corona, Landsat) and aerial images, as well as new archaeological data and a detailed field survey were applied to the study of the hydrographic evolution of the Kura (Mtkvari) River and of its tributaries; its influence on the archaeological sites scattered between the villages of Natsargora and Agara was also examined. Finally, four stratigraphic profiles were analysed; these are situated along the Kura river and on its tributaries flowing from the Greater Caucasus: the Western and the Eastern Prone. Geoarchaeological analyses were carried out in the Bronze Age settlements: the first one -Natsargora- is situated on the top of a mound facing a valley, in an area of low hills, and it lies upon the Neogene bedrock. The position of the site indicates that the drainage system was already in a phase of deepening during the Early Bronze Age. The second one is located on a terrace of the Kura River and corresponds to the mound of Aradetis Orgora. The reconstruction of the palaeosurfaces and palaeochannels, and a radiocarbon date from the base of this site, allowed to outline the changes in fluvial style and drainage network.

Two Bronze Age human settlements of the Western Karthaliny Basin (Transcaucasia region, Georgia) were studied using a multidisciplinary approach. Satellite data (Corona, Landsat) and aerial images, as well as new archaeological data and a detailed field survey were applied to the study of the hydrographic evolution of the Kura (Mtkvari) River and of its tributaries; its influence on the archaeological sites scattered between the villages of Natsargora and Agara was also examined. Finally, four stratigraphic profiles were analysed; these are situated along the Kura river and on its tributaries flowing from the Greater Caucasus: the Western and the Eastern Prone. Geoarchaeological analyses were carried out in the Bronze Age settlements: the first one -Natsargora- is situated on the top of a mound facing a valley, in an area of low hills, and it lies upon the Neogene bedrock. The position of the site indicates that the drainage system was already in a phase of deepening during the Early Bronze Age. The second one is located on a terrace of the Kura River and corresponds to the mound of Aradetis Orgora. The reconstruction of the palaeosurfaces and palaeochannels, and a radiocarbon date from the base of this site, allowed to outline the changes in fluvial style and drainage network.

MEDFLOOD is a four-year interdisciplinary project recently launched by a team of scientists working in fields concerned with Mediterranean sea-level change. The project has the timely and ambitious aim to build a spatially explicit database of relative sea levels for the Mediterranean and to use this resource to model risk and help project future flooding in and around the Mediterranean basin.