The Sybaris Plain (Italy) evolution during the late Holocene: The interplay of climatic, hydrological and anthropic factors

Coastal deltaic plains are sensitive environments to climatic and anthropogenic changes. Natural processes (e.g. land subsidence and sea level rise) are often associated with the anthropogenic pressure of past populations in the land-use and exploitation of resources, often difficult to discriminate. Nowadays the human impact in coastal subsiding plains is exacerbated by the water pumping and the land salinization. The Sybaris Plain (north-eastern Calabria, Southern Italy) is a perfect case study of a coastal subsiding plain in the Mediterranean basin. The plain was inhabited since the Early and Late Neolithic and becomes afterwards part of the agrarian and funerary landscape of the Greek colonies of Sybaris and Thurii. After the Roman colony of Copiae the area was inhabited also during the Medieval and early modern times. A sediment core (S4 TER, 39°73’N; 16°40’E, at 13 m a.s.l) was recently drilled for the paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the plain. Lithological and palynological analyses are associated with 3-cm spacing magnetic susceptibility measurement and radiocarbon dates. Results of pollen analysis show different phases of the vegetation cover, from swamps and marshy lagoon surrounded by a belt of humid trees (e.g. Salix and Alnus) to open environments dominated by herbaceous plants. Pollen of Cichorieae, in combination with the presence of microcharcoals and fungi spores, point out the presence of pastoralism and human impact on vegetation, as confirmed by the archaeological evidence. Fast lithological changes between gravels, sands, and silts with peat levels, confirm different hydrological assets of the plain during the last millennia. Nowadays natural hazards like the swamping and flood hazards events, affect the plain. Investigate the environmental evolution through time and the human resilience in these areas could be useful to identify key signals in the fossil record.