No abstract

Although Turkey is a mid-latitude country, because of its relatively high topography it hosted Quaternary glaciers on its mountains. Some of these high mountains (> 3500 m above sea level) still contain recent glaciers, probably remnants of Holocene glacier advances. Despite the abundance of recent cosmogenic surface exposure dating studies in Turkey, Holocene glacial chronologies are still limited. Here, we reviewed five mountains in Turkey where Holocene chronologies were presented in earlier studies. All these glacial chronologies are located in the western and central Taurus Mountain Ranges and in central Anatolia. The timing of the glaciations has been established mainly by cosmogenic 36 Cl surface exposure dating. We recalculated some of the published cosmogenic ages using up-to-date production rates and scaling schemas. The maximum extent of glaciers was during the Last Glacial Maximum (c. 21 ka), but Late-glacial (c. 16 ka) and Younger Dryas (c. 12 ka) ages were also reported. At the onset of the Holocene (c. 11 ka), glaciers retreated to less extensive positions and deposited their moraines. Contemporaneously, periglacial and paraglacial processes also became active with the development of rock glaciers in several parts of the country. Some mountains still contain active glaciers although the melting tendency is obvious as in other parts of the world. Considering the paleoglacial/glacial regions in Turkey, there are numerous areas that do not have their own glacial chronologies and further studies should focus on these undated regions.

<p>The Taurus Mountain Range extends parallel to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. It hosts lofty mountains (>3000 m above sea level, a.s.l.) carved by glaciers in the Late Pleistocene. Despite the recent studies in Anatolia, Mt. Davraz (2635 m a.s.l.) has not been studied in detail and its glacial chronology was lacking. This study presents our first findings of the glacial history, origin and geochronology of Mt. Davraz, which is located SW of Eğirdir Lake (915 m a.s.l.), 100 km north of Antalya city. Tectonics, karstification, glaciation, and periglaciation have led a distinctive geomorphology of the area. The main landscape of the area is predominantly shaped by paleoglaciers. Cirques are the dominant glacial erosional landforms, and most of them were developed on the northern slopes of Mt. Davraz. Based on the topographical limitations, cirque paleoglaciers could not to transformed into valley glaciers. Although it is one of the lowest mountains in the Taurus Mountain Range, it has a large hummocky field with an area of about 3 km<sup>2</sup> on the northern slope. It was developed by a paleo-ice cap. There is also a smaller hummocky field deformed by a rock glacier advancements on the E-NE slopes of the mountain. In order to understand the timing of paleoglaciations, we obtained 6 cosmogenic 36Cl surface exposure ages from the moraine boulders on hummocky field. Based on the preliminary results, Mt. Davraz hummocky field yielded sequential retreat history; the eastern hummocky field deposited their moraines at 21.7 ± 1.5 ka ago, while the western hummocky field at 17.7 ± 1.2 ka ago. Our results show that the glaciers started to retreat by the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and continued to the earlier stages of Late-glacial. This work was supported by TÜBİTAK-118Y052 project.</p>