Emergence of Venice during the Pleistocene

The Pleistocene history of sea-level change for the Venice region was reconstructed using an integrated magneto-bio-cyclostratigraphy of lithofacies and a published palynofloral analysis of continuously cored sediments in a 950-meter-deep drill core. The basin in which the Venice region is located collapsed at ∼1.8 Ma with slow sediment accumulation in the deeper-water starved basin during most of the Matuyama polarity chron but shoaled rapidly in the early and middle Brunhes in response to a major phase of deltaic progradation. The initial transition to continental sediments occurred during a prominent glacioeustatic low-stand that is likely to be MIS 12 (∼0.43 Ma) but could be as young as MIS 8 (∼0.25 Ma). The Venice area oscillated from below sea level during subsequent major glacioeustatic high-stands to becoming increasingly emergent during major low-stands as the basin continued to fill with marine and continental sediments. Some parts of the Venice area are now emergent for the first time during a glacioeustatic high-stand (i.e., MIS 1 or the Holocene). The total long-term subsidence rate estimated from the VENICE-1 record is less than 0.5 mm/yr, considerably slower than estimates for the Holocene and especially the modern anthropogenic period.