Effects of climate changes on the late Pleistocene and Holocene sediments of the Venice Lagoon, Italy

The effects of global climatic changes that occurred since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), are recognizable in the stratigraphic sequences from several areas in different locations around the world and, in particular, in coastal areas. Our study reports some examples from the Lagoon of Venice of the paleoclimatic change effects on the mineralogical composition and textural characteristics of clay and sand deposits, with emphasis on the stiff layer, locally called "caranto" at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary and on cemented sand formations outcropping inside the northern lagoon and about 6 km off the southern littoral (Chioggia) in the Adriatic Sea.