15 Last Glacial Maximum Depositional Sequence, Po River Plain, Italy—Ultra-High Resolution Sequence Stratigraphy of a Cenozoic Coastal-Plain-to-Shallow-Marine Foreland Basin

ABSTRACT The Upper Pleistocene to Holocene (post-last glacial maximum) succession of the Po River Plain, northern Italy, illustrates the expression of sequence-stratigraphic surfaces and stratal units in paralic and coastal-plain settings that are different from the settings of most of the mudstone units considered thus far in this book. This interval spans shallow-marine, shoreline, lagoonal, swamp, and fluvial-floodplain environments. The Po River Plain is an excellent place to study how the stratal record of changing eustasy is mediated by sediment-supply rates (detrital and biogenic) as well as by all the components of accommodation (e.g., subsidence, compaction, and groundwater table) for four reasons: Our study shows how applying the sequence-stratigraphic method and approach from first principles in transitional environments can provide insights into the accumulation of mud in a setting that is the critical link between continental hinterlands and marine depositional basins.