Geological features

Among the geological issues tackled when preparing the Sheet are:
1) the application of unconventionally limited stratigraphic units (UBSU) to islands having a prevailingly volcanic nature;
2) the dynamics of a sandy coast composed of dune bars with limno-palustrine environments in the background;
3) the mapping of a large sea area around the islands having a very articulate volcanic substratum and a complex marine sedimentation controlled by parameters such as depth and hydrodynamics as well as biological factors.
The archipelago is developed along the external margin of the continental platform, near a slope that is depressed by a series of step faults leading to the Tyrrhenian deep-sea plain. This is an effect of the relaxing tectonic regime that started during the Pliocene. The three islands’ vulcanism appears connected to these last extensional events and seems to have originated from the same deep magmatic source.