Sicily Channel (Sicilian Channel; Strait of Sicily), Italyi

Regional Level Types
Sicily Channel (Sicilian Channel; Strait of Sicily)	Channel
Italy	- not defined -

The Sicily Channel is located in the northern part of the African continental plate called the Pelagian Block, within a south-central segment of the Apennines-Maghrebides belt developing in the mid-western Mediterranean Sea. The Sicily Channel is a shallow sea and the water depth is less than 400 m in most of the strait whereas it ranges from 1300 to 1700 m in three NW–SE oriented depressions located in proximity of the islands of Pantelleria, Malta and Linosa. Despite the whole basin represents the Sicilian foreland of the Neogene Apennine-Maghrebian thrust belt, these bathymetric depressions are a morphological expression of a continental rifting episode affecting the Northern African lithosphere since the Neogene-Quaternary. The rifting thinned the continental crust from ca. 30 to 15–18 km in the early Pliocene and opened the Pantelleria, Malta and Linosa grabens controlled by NW-oriented subvertical normal faults.

In the Sicily Channel, volcanic activity is concentrated mainly on the islands of Pantelleria and Linosa. Minor submarine volcanism took place on the seafloor, where at least ten recent volcanoes of various dimensions, moslty located along NW-SE regional faults, have been recognised (Calanchi et al., 1989). Some of these seamounts erupted during historical times, others are covered by undisturbed Pliocene-Quaternary sediments and have been detected by seismic profiles and magnetic survey. Several of these submarine volcanoes are located in Adventure Plateau and in Graham and Nameless Banks. The oldest products have been found in a submarine volcanic seamount located eastward of Nameless Bank, where hawaiitic dredged samples gave a K-Ar age of 9.5 ± 0.4 Ma (Beccaluva et al., 1981). However, the climax of the volcanism occurred during the Pleistocene on the islands of Linosa and Pantelleria; the volcanic centers recognized in Adventure Plateau (Anfitrite, Tetide, Galatea, and Cimatoe) are also considered to be of Plio-Pleistocene age (Calanchi et al., 1989). Historical activity took place in the nineteenth century close to Pantelleria. On Graham Bank, in A.D. 1831 a submarine volcano was constructed at a depth of ~200 m, giving rise to an ephemeral island ~65 m above sea level named Ferdinandea Island. This volcano erupted again in 1863. The youngest eruptions of the region took place in 1891 ~5 km northwest of Pantelleria, where a submarine volcanic eruption was recorded (Washington, 1909), and in 1941 at the Pinne Bank (coordinates 36.91394 N, 12.87395 E) at the southeastern wedge of Graham Bank, where emissions of gases were observed (Carapezza et al., 1979; Imbò, 1965).

References

Other Databases

Wikipedia:	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Sicily
Wikidata ID:	Q206975
GeoNames ID:	2523117

Localities in this Region