The Monti Aurunci (or Aurunci Mountains) is a

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arise ...

of southern

Lazio it, Laziale , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

, in central Italy. It is part of the Antiappennini, a group running from the Apennines chain to the

Tyrrhenian Sea The Tyrrhenian Sea (; it, Mar Tirreno , french: Mer Tyrrhénienne , sc, Mare Tirrenu, co, Mari Tirrenu, scn, Mari Tirrenu, nap, Mare Tirreno) is part of the Mediterranean Sea off the western coast of Italy. It is named for the Tyrrhenian pe ...

, where it forms the promontory of Gaeta. It is bounded to the north-west by the Ausoni Mountains, to the north by the Liri river, to the east by the Ausente, to the south-east by the

Garigliano The Garigliano () is a river in central Italy. It forms at the confluence of the rivers Gari (also known as the Rapido) and Liri. Garigliano is actually a deformation of "Gari-Lirano" (which in Italian means something like "Gari from the Liri") ...

and to the south by the Tyrrhenian sea. The line between the Aurunci and the Ausoni has not been clearly established but the Aurunci are considered by convention to be east of a line through

Fondi Fondi ( la, Fundi; Southern Laziale: ''Fùnn'') is a city and ''comune'' in the province of Latina, Lazio, central Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. I ...

, Lenola,

Pico Pico may refer to: Places The Moon * Mons Pico, a lunar mountain in the northern part of the Mare Imbrium basin Portugal * Pico, a civil parish in the municipality of Vila Verde * Pico da Pedra, a civil parish in the municipality of Ribeir ...

, S. Giovanni and Incarico. Altitudes vary from hills to the 1,533 m of Monte Petrella. Main peaks include the

Redentore The Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore ( en, Church of the Most Holy Redeemer), commonly known as Il Redentore, is a 16th-century Roman Catholic church located on Giudecca (island) in the ''sestiere'' of Dorsoduro, in the city of Venice, Italy. It ...

(1,252 m) and

Monte Sant'Angelo Monte Sant'Angelo ( Foggiano: ) is a town and ''comune'' of Apulia, southern Italy, in the province of Foggia, on the southern slopes of Monte Gargano. History Monte Sant'Angelo as a town appeared only in the 11th century. Between 1081 and 1103, ...

(1,402 m). They include a regional park, the Parco Naturale dei Monti Aurunci, created in 1997. The mountains take the name from the ancient tribe of the

Aurunci The Aurunci were an Italic tribe that lived in southern Italy from around the 1st millennium BC. They were eventually defeated by Rome and subsumed into the Roman Republic during the second half of the 4th century BC. Identity Aurunci is the n ...

, an offshoot of the

Ausoni "Ausones" (; ), the original Greek form for the Latin "Aurunci", was a name applied by Greek writers to describe various Italic peoples inhabiting the southern and central regions of Italy. The term was used, specifically, to denote the partic ...

. Both tribes were derived from the

Italic people The Italic peoples were an ethnolinguistic group identified by their use of Italic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family. The Italic peoples are descended from the Indo-European speaking peoples who inhabited Italy from at leas ...

who were called by the Romans the

Volsci The Volsci (, , ) were an Italic tribe, well known in the history of the first century of the Roman Republic. At the time they inhabited the partly hilly, partly marshy district of the south of Latium, bounded by the Aurunci and Samnites on the ...

; hence, the

Monti Lepini The Monti Lepini (Italian: Lepini mountains) are a mountain range which belongs to the Anti-Apennines of the Lazio region of central Italy, between the two provinces of Latina and Rome. The range borders to the north with the Colli Albani, to t ...

, the

Monti Ausoni The Monti Ausoni or Ausoni Mountains constitute a mountain range in southern Lazio, in central Italy. It is part of the Antiappennini, a group running from the Apennines chain to the Tyrrhenian Sea. They are bounded to the north by the Monti L ...

and the Monti Aurunci are also called the Volsci or Volscian Chain. Coincidentally they are all of the same karst topography and have the same orogeny, which is not quite the same as the Apennines proper.

Geology

The Monti Aurunci mainly consist of

friable Friability ( ), the condition of being friable, describes the tendency of a solid substance to break into smaller pieces under duress or contact, especially by rubbing. The opposite of friable is indurate. Substances that are designated hazardous, ...

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

, which becomes harder toward Gaeta. The degree of faulting and cracking is so high that the mountains retain no rainfall; it sinks in to emerge as springs (and used as wells) on the lower flanks. The stream beds are dry except for vernal pools. Most generally, the western-central coastal region of Italy is the front of a subduction zone where the

African plate The African Plate is a major tectonic plate that includes much of the continent of Africa (except for its easternmost part) and the adjacent oceanic crust to the west and south. It is bounded by the North American Plate and South American Plate ...

moving locally from southwest to northeast is carried under the European plate. There is some counterclockwise rotation of Italy; hence the faults in the

slip both parallel to the shoreline and perpendicular to it. The surface rock in the Anti-Apennines was deposited on the floor of

Tethys Sea The Tethys Ocean ( el, Τηθύς ''Tēthús''), also called the Tethys Sea or the Neo-Tethys, was a prehistoric ocean that covered most of the Earth during much of the Mesozoic Era and early Cenozoic Era, located between the ancient continents ...

during the

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...

and

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

of the

Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretace ...

. This lighter calcareous rock rides over the front of the subduction zone, uplifted by compressional and isostatic forces. Just behind it is a zone of crustal thinning caused by extensional forces; i.e., the subduction and the rotation cause a wave of compression with a peak under the Anti-Apennines and a valley in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The result is a karst-graben or half-graben landform with the Volscian Mountains as karst and the coastal chain of

Pontine marshes 250px, Lake Fogliano, a coastal lagoon in the Pontine Plain The Pontine Marshes (, also ; it, Agro Pontino , formerly also ''Paludi Pontine''; la, Pomptinus Ager by Titus Livius, ''Pomptina Palus'' (singular) and ''Pomptinae Paludes'' (plu ...

, South Pontine marsh,

Terracina Terracina is an Italian city and ''comune'' of the province of Latina, located on the coast southeast of Rome on the Via Appia ( by rail). The site has been continuously occupied since antiquity. History Ancient times Terracina appears in anci ...

Basin, Gaeta Basin and

Volturno The Volturno (ancient Latin name Volturnus, from ''volvere'', to roll) is a river in south-central Italy. Geography It rises in the Abruzzese central Apennines of Samnium near Castel San Vincenzo (province of Isernia, Molise) and flows southe ...

Basin as graben. This landform began to appear in the Messinian stage of the

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

, about 7.2 to 5.3 million years ago. It went on to mature in the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Latium Latium ( , ; ) is the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome was founded and grew to be the capital city of the Roman Empire. Definition Latium was originally a small triangle of fertile, volcanic soil ( Old Latium) on w ...

and

Campania (man), it, Campana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demog ...

, which intruded into the karst-graben, mainly on the karst side. In the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

the basins slowly filled with sediment from the weak run-off of the mountains, accelerating with the deforestation of modern times.

Ecology

Fauna

Of the Amphibians,

Urodela Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All ten ...

are found at around and Anura at around in vernal pools, springs and wells. The salamanders are'' Salamandrina perspicillata'', ''Triturus carnifex'', ''Lissotriton italicus'' and ''Lissotriton vulgaris''; the frogs are ''

Bufo bufo The common toad, European toad, or in Anglophone parts of Europe, simply the toad (''Bufo bufo'', from Latin ''bufo'' "toad"), is a frog found throughout most of Europe (with the exception of Ireland, Iceland, and some Mediterranean islands), in ...

'', '' Bufo viridis'', '' Hyla intermedia ''and ''Rana italica''. The Garigliano Nuclear Power Plant was constructed from 1959 to 1963 by

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...

on the Garigliano River, the water of which they used for cooling, on the border of the Monti Aurunci. It was intended to provide electrical power to the region. After several accidental releases of radioactive gas and water the plant ceased operation in 1978 but continued to be used as a storage facility for radioactive waste, which was stored under the plant. Subsequent flooding carried the waste downstream into the Gulf of Gaeta. The effect on the ecology was toxic. One study reports: Additional studies were unable to tie anomalies of the skull and teeth in the area's rodents to contamination from the power plant; maybe they are attributable to a naturally high radiational level caused by the volcanic intrusions in the rock. The lower Garigliano remains sparsely populated. Transparency table In 2011, the Transparency Table for the disposal of the Garigliano nuclear power plant was established in the Campania Region, with the resolution of G.R. n. 163 of 29/4/2011, integrated by the resolution of G.R. n. 428/2011. With the decree of the President of the Giunta n. 253 of 11/11/2011, the members of the Table were appointed, as identified by the bodies to which they belong, and the Regulations for its functioning were approved 4 Disputes over possible radioactive leaks In April 2014, some articles appeared on the net referring to the results of studies conducted at the beginning of the 1980s at ENEA, CNEN and SIMP (Italian Society of Mineralogy and Petrology) concerning the contamination of the Garigliano and part of the Gulf of Gaeta by radionuclides from the power plant. 5 The articles refer to the "Proceedings of the Italo-French Convention of Radiation Protection - Florence 30 May, 1 June 1983", to the study conducted within ENEA entitled: "Influence of Geomorphological Factors on the distribution of Radionuclides - An example: from M. Circeo to Volturno "(by A. Brondi, O. Ferretti, C. Papucci) and to the" Report no.38 of the Italian Society of Mineralogy and Petrology " 6 which in turn refers to the results of the environmental research conducted at the end of the 1970s from CNEN.The plant, thanks to the EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) obtained in 2009, has started decommissioning with Sogin (the Italian state company responsible for the dismantling of Italian nuclear plants and for the management and safety of radioactive waste) which is owner since 1999: by 2028 it is expected that the 268,150 tons of waste and 5,739 tons of radioactive waste will be adequately treated, for a total cost of 383 million euros. The "skeleton" of the structure, however, will remain standing as the "architectural heritage of our country".

References

Sources

External links

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Mountain ranges of Italy