Past to present deformation of the central-eastern Southern Alps: from the foreland to the Giudicarie belt

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3301/GFT.2018.01 - Pages: 1-78

A field trip across the central-eastern sector of the Southern Alps, from the foreland to the Giudicarie fold-and thrust belt, is here described. The field trip, which was held on 12-13 July 2017, followed the Annual Meeting of the Gruppo Italiano di Geologia Strutturale (GIGS) of the Italian Geological Society. It was organized by the Geoscience Department of the University of Padova as a 2-day itinerary in Veneto and Trentino. This guide provides a geological overview of the main structural domains of the central-eastern Southern Alps (the Giudicarie and Schio-Vicenza domains) and focuses on evidence of past and present brittle deformation, principally within carbonate rocks of Late Triassic to Early Cretaceous age. The itinerary and Stop descriptions are particularly devoted to observation and discussion of exhumed faults, present and past seismicity, large landslides/rock avalanches of Holocene to historic age, and their interactions. The observation of specific outcrops is also combined with spectacular panoramas illustrating the regional tectonic setting of the Southern Alps and of the nearby Austroalpine units.

Structural geology, faults, rock-avalanches, historical seismicity, seismic faulting, Southern Alps, Veneto, Trentino.