Italian volcanic soils

Abstract

Volcanic soils are extensive in Italy's central-southern area. Most volcanic rocks belong to the co-magmatic Roman-Campano province as expression of a perpotassic volcanism which started about one million years ago in connection with the last phases of Apennine's orogenesis, when the rapid collapse of the Tirrenic area occurred, generating a series of Horst and Graben. Rocks deriving from these magmas are relatively saturated with silica and contain potassium and sodium-rich minerals. Most older effusions are trachitic, but more recent tend to be basic. This review relies on various publications by a number of scientists on Italian volcanic soils. The nature of these publications is quite variable, which makes the attempt of to produce a coherent review difficult. I first try to set forth the progression of research made on different volcanic systems, followed by analysis of soil genesis. Finally I synthesize soil evolution conditions in various Italian volcanic systems which are not active any more. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.