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The proposed geological itinerary connects a series of impressive outcrops distributed between the front and the inner portion of the Southern Apennine thrust belt. It offers the opportunity to visit some of the most interesting and bestexposed Southern Apennine geosites, inserted within landscapes typical of the different sectors of the thrust belt, in order to illustrate its geological evolution. The itinerary has been designed in such a way as to intersect different stacked tectonic units and a great variety of sedimentary successions whose age ranges from Triassic to Pleistocene. Each of the chosen geosite contains multidisciplinary geological information that may be of interest for researchers, but may be also appreciated by a general public interested in geology. In particular, the stratigraphy, the structural geology and the geomorphology are the most recurrently treated topics. Most of these outcrops extend for many hundreds or thousands of metres and include villages or mountain reliefs. Therefore, every single site can be considered as an areal geosite containing particular geological features. However, the largest geosite can also be observed in a panoramic view from suitable locations. Thus, each of these sites provides different evidence and when combined together provides an opportunity to understand the complex geological history of the Southern Apennines. The motivation for establishing this itinerary mostly resides in the great scientific interest of the chosen outcrops; this will hopefully facilitate their conservation and the development of geotourism.

The Fossa Bradanica in Basilicata (S Italy) is\ud affected by almost 15% permanent Pleistocene and Holocene\ud gullies. In the past decades climate versus land use\ud management have dramatically increase both the soil loss\ud rate and the muddy-flooding frequency. In this paper the\ud impact of global change on soil production rates and erosion/\ud deposition dynamics at medium-time scale (1949–2000) for\ud two permanent gullies (Fosso Lavandaio and Fosso San\ud Teodoro) has been studied. Pluviometric regime, land use\ud changes and multi-temporal (1949, 1986 and 2000) subtraction\ud method of digital elevation models have been conducted.\ud From 1949 to 1986 the sediment production rate was\ud estimated in 1,988.43 Mg ha-1 year-1 at Fosso Lavandaio\ud and in 808.5 Mg ha-1 year-1 at Fosso San Teodoro, with\ud deposition prevailing over erosion processes. From 1986\ud to 2000 the sediment production rate was estimated in\ud 2,487.92 Mg ha-1 year-1 at Fosso Lavandaio and in\ud 2,883.9 Mg ha-1 year-1 at Fosso San Teodoro, with higher\ud values of net erosion. The data confirm that the increase in\ud sedimentation would be due to human activities, in particular\ud the levelling of gully heads for the production of cereals and\ud orchards. Differently, the increase of the erosion processes\ud depends on the recent changes of the pluviometric regime\ud characterized by the extension of dry horizon and the concentration\ud of high magnitude precipitation in macro-events\ud of three to four consecutive days