GLAMED Project: Unravelling the Late Pleistocene glaciation history of the Apennine mountains (Italian Peninsula)

Running along the spine of the Italian Peninsula, the Apennine mountains contain numerous traces of Late Pleistocene glaciations. Most glacial sediments and landforms in the Apennines, such as frontal and lateral moraine ridges, have been tentatively ascribed to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Numerical age control to confirm this hypothesis, however, is only available at very few sites, in particular in the Tosco-Emilian Apennines. Improving glacial chronologies in other sectors of the mountain range is necessary to understand how glaciers in the Italian Peninsula responded to variations in the position of the North Atlantic storm track and changes in Mediterranean circulation throughout the Late Pleistocene.

GLAMED is a new project funded by the University of Padova that aims at better constraining the Late Pleistocene glaciation history in different sectors of the Apennines by integrating geomorphological mapping with the analysis of soil profiles and various geochronological techniques. First field campaigns in the northernmost part of the mountain range (Ligurian Apennines - Aveto catchment) have revealed the existence of small, confined mountain glaciers, likely related to the LGM. However, there is also scattered evidence for a much more extensive and older glaciation, possibly during MIS 6, which has not been described in the northern Apennines previously. Samples for surface exposure dating have been collected to test this hypothesis and to compare the results with chronological data from the central and southern part of the mountain range.