Large-scale seafloor bedforms on the flanks of insular volcanoes (Aeolian Archipelago, Italy) with inferences about their origin.

High-resolution multibeam data in the central and eastern part of the Aeolian volcanic arc (Southern Tyrrhenian Sea) reveal widespread large-scale waveforms on the submarine flanks of these insular volcanoes. These features show high variability in wave parameters (wavelength of 60–1600 m and wave height of 4–200 m) and morphology (from sinuous to arcuate in plan-view, and from undulating to stepped, with very steep scarps, in cross-section), indicating that different processes, at variable spatial and temporal scale, are responsible for their genesis. By relating the morphological characters of the different waveforms and the local boundary conditions (morphological setting, regional slope gradients, sediment source and dynamics) where these features form, we were able to distinguish bedforms formed by sedimentary gravity flows from bedform-like features due to gravity instability processes. In detail, bedforms have been interpreted as coarse-grained sediment waves according to their wave parameters, geometry and texture. Bedforms are always found where the slope gradients markedly decrease to values