The northern Tyrrhenian margin of Calabria in southern Italy provides a natural laboratory for sampling sand ar different scales: small drainages (first order), rivers draining mountain ranges (second order), and marine environments (beach to deep-marine; third order). Calabrian mountain ranges represent an uplifted and variable dissected thrust belt constituted by Palaeozoic through Pleistocene plutonic, metamorphic, ophiolitic, carbonate and siliciclastic rocks. The modem setting includes a mountainous coast, having high rates of fluvial discharge, and the deep-marine Paola Basin. The composition of modem fluvial and beach sands is useful for the interpretation of sediment transported into deeper-water environments. Modem beach and fluvial sands of the northern Tyrrhenian margin of Calabria define three distinct petrologic provinces, from noah to the south: (1) the Lao Littoral Province has calclithite sand derived from erosion of dominantly carbonates of the southern Apennines; (2) the Coastal Range Littoral Province has quartzolithic sand derived from dominantly metamorphic (schist and phyllite) Coastal Range; and (3) the Santa Eufemia Littoral Province has quarzofeldspathic sand derived from dominantly metamorphic Coastal Range and Sila Massif and plutono-metamorphic Mount Pore provenances. Deep-marine turbidites of the Paola Basin have basinwide quartzolithic turbidite sands having close compositional relations with Coastal Range littoral petrofacies. Only at the northern boundary of the Paola Basin, calclithite turbidite sand record deep-water dispersal of the Lao littoral sands. Comparison of detrital modes from mainland to deep-marine environments contribute to the models of dispersal pathways and geographical extension of actualistic sand petrofacies.
