SABATINI VOLCANIC COMPLEX

Prefazione - Indice

Prefazione

The present paper is framed into a wide and articulate research to which many Authors have shared in. The whole work consists in a monographic study concerning the more outstanding geological, geomorphological and volcanological aspects of the Mounts Sabatini area; this very interesting area has been subject - during rather recent times - to violent and complex volcanic phenomena. The aim of this study is to search into the groundwork of this part of Latium also to give valid support to some geological applicatory investigations, among which those connected with geothermal researches stand aut.
The Sabatini volcanic complex is placed in northern-central Latium about 20 km to the north of Rome and it is bordered to the north by the Vico volcano, to the west by the Mounts of Tolfa, to the south by the Tiber lower valley, and finally, to the east by the Mount Soratte-Mounts Cornicolani structure. This complex, together with the other Latian volcanic complexes, is part of the so-called "Roman Province", an alkali-potassic province developed - in a belt paralleling the Tyrrhenian coast - maily during the Pleistocene and that has been active up to recent times.
The volcanism - with an areal type activity and numerous eruptive centres widespread aver an area of about 1,500 km2 - caused the emplacement of a big amount of products prevailingly made of pyroclastic flows, hydromagmatic products, lava sheets, pyroclastic fall products; they gave rise to a wide plateau gently sloping from the central part of the complex towards the peripheral areas.
The landscape of the Sabatini area is characterized in its central part by a wide volcano-tectonic depression holding the Bracciano Lake and by a series of more strictly volcanic depressions (craters and calderas) some of which also hold small lakes, like those of Martignano and Monterosi. The highest relief is in the sector to the north of the Bracciano Lake and corresponds whith several scoria and lava cones reaching the maximum elevation (612 m a.s.l.) at Mount Rocca Romana. The other areas show wide low-relief structural surfaces often deeply cut by a series of perennial watercourses; among them particularly important are the Fosso di S. Martino and the Treia River in the northern sector, the Rio Cremera and the Fosso della Torraccia in the eastern sector, the Mignone River and the Arrone River in the werthern and soutern sector respectively.
The studied area has been abject of investigations carried out by different specialists on the stratigraphy of pre-volcanic sedimentary formations - outcropping or reached by drillings - on the strutigraphy of volcanic formations, on the geomorphological characteristics, on both the surface and deep tectonic arrangement of this area and on its geodynamic evolution.



R. FUNICIELLO, E. LUPIA PALMIERI, M. PAROTTO