The marine terrace staircase of the Metaponto coastal belt, southern Italy: from geomorphological mapping to uplift rate estimates revised

New geomorphological analyses of a wide coastal sector (ca. 1500 km²) between northern Calabria and Puglia (Lucanian segment), including a well exposed area of marine terraces along the Ionian coast of southern Italy, have been carried out. This belt represents a key area for investigating the middle-late Quaternary morphological and tectonic evolution of the orogenic system of southern Italy. The main goal of our research was the construction of a new, detailed and complete map of the entire sequence of marine terraces and associated paleoshorelines along the whole coastal sector. This was achieved following a systematic analysis of air‐photos and satellite images, integrated by field work and survey devoted to checking all the morphological features. Data were interpreted by uniform methods of geomorphological analysis in order to obtain an accurate reconstruction of the lateral continuity of the terraces and, therefore, to solve the problems of geometric and numerical fit between the terraces staircases from different sectors of the coastal belt separated by major rivers. A critical review of the literature related to geochronological data from the study area, integrated with a morphogenetic model based on the interaction between tectonic uplift and eustatic sea-level changes, allowed demonstrating that the different terraces are correlated to many highstand peaks, dating the highest/oldest terrace to mid-Pleistocene times. Such an approach allowed us to revise the wide data set related to the estimates of uplift rates based on the merely altitudinal criterion. Another relevant outcome of our study implies that the most external sectors of the orogenic chain (i.e. the southern Apennines), and likely the whole chain‐foredeep-foreland system, probably remained under a prevailingly compressional tectonic regime during the entire Quaternary period, with consequences for the seismic hazard of the region.