The Alps-Apennines Interference Zone: A Perspective from the Maritime and Western Ligurian Alps

Abstract

In SW Piemonte the Western Alps arc ends off in a narrow, E-W trending zone, where some geological domains of the Alps converged. Based on a critical review of available data, integrated with new field data, it is concluded that the southern termination of Western Alps recorded the Oligocene-Miocene activity of a regional transfer zone (southwestern Alps Transfer, SWAT) already postulated in the literature, which should have allowed, since early Oligocene, the westward indentation of Adria, while the regional shortening of SW Alps and tectonic transport toward the SSW (Dauphinois foreland) was continuing. This transfer zone corresponds to a system of deformation units and km-scale shear zones (Gardetta-Viozene Zone, GVZ). The GVZ/SWAT developed externally to the Penninic Front (PF), here corresponding to the Internal Briançonnais Front (IBF), which separates the Internal Briançonnais domain, affected by major tectono-metamorphic transformations, from the External Briançonnais, subjected only to anchizonal metamorphic conditions. The postcollisional evolution of the SW Alps axial belt units was recorded by the Oligocene to Miocene inner syn-orogenic basin (Tertiary Piemonte Basin, TPB), which rests also on the Ligurian units stacked within the adjoining Apennines belt in southern Piemonte. The TPB successions were controlled by transpressive faults propagating (to E and NE) from the previously formed Alpine belt, as well as by the Apennine thrusts that were progressively stacking the Ligurian units, resting on the subducting Adriatic continental margin, with the TPB units themselves. This allows correlation between Alps and Apennines kinematics, in terms of age of the main geologic events, interference between the main structural systems and tectonic control exerted by both tectonic belts on the same syn-orogenic basin.