Pollen records and pollen-based climate reconstructions fromthe Italian peninsula (centralMediterranean) show\ud clear signals of vegetation change linked to variations inwater availability in theMediterranean basin over the past\ud 5 million years. Profound vegetation changes occurred in four major steps from the Pliocene to the present. The\ud subtropical taxa that dominate Pliocene assemblages declined and then disappeared between 3–2.8 and\ud 1.66Ma (at around 2.8Ma in the North and later in the South), progressively being replaced by temperate Quercus\ud forests at mid altitude. In the south Italy, Quercus expanded more at around 1.4–1.3 Ma and Fagus proportions\ud increased after 0.5 Ma. Conifer forest (first mainly composed of Tsuga then by Abies and Picea) began to expand\ud at 2.8 Ma, probably rather at high altitude, beginning at 2.8 Ma. Mediterranean-type forest, rare during the Early\ud Pleistocene, developed and increased in diversity during the Middle Pleistocene. Open landscapes, with higher\ud abundances of steppic taxa, becamemore frequent and extensive at the onset of Glacial/Interglacial (G/I) cyclicity\ud around 2.6 Ma and gradually expanded with more and more marked glacials. Climate reconstructions done on\ud selected pollen records from southern Italy suggest a decline in winter temperature and annual precipitation\ud fromthe early Pleistocene to the Holocene. Specifically, both precipitation andwinter temperature reconstructions\ud show changes in interglacial maxima and glacial minima at around 3–2.8 Ma, 2 Ma, 1.3–1.4 Ma and 0.5 Ma.\ud This critical review provides evidence that the North–South precipitation gradient, with drier conditions in the\ud South, has been a consistent feature of the Italian peninsula since the beginning of the Pleistocene

The Quaternary evolution of the main coastal basins located along the southwestern margin of the Southern Apennines has been reconstructed by integrating the huge amount of existing stratigraphical and geomorphological data. The information produced in the last twenty years has shed new light on the recent (late Middle Pleistocene to Present) history of the Campanian and Sele plains or basins. During the early Quaternary, the analysed coastal basins originated as half-grabens in response to opening processes active since the late Tortonian in the southern Tyrrhenian back-arc basin. In some of these basins (e.g. the Campanian Plain), volcanism has also played an important role. In the inner sectors of the coastal basins, the complex interplay between block faulting, sedimentary inputs and glacioeustatic fluctuations gave rise to relative sea-level change and related coastline migrations, leading to the formation of the present-day coastal plains. In the Sele Plain basin, the construction of the present-day landscape mainly resulted from the substantial ceasing of subsidence in the final part of the Middle Pleistocene. Conversely, a strong contribution to the recent evolution of the Campanian Plain has been provided by abundant volcaniclastic aggradation, able to hinder the effect of the vertical motions that occurred in the last 100 ka.