When did the drainage system of the Kızılırmak River form in Cappadocia (Anatolia, Turkey)? A revised geological and geomorphological stratigraphy

Abstract

The Kızılırmak is the longest river in Turkey, extending from the western part of eastern Anatolia to the Black Sea, and crossing the orogenic Central Anatolian Plateau (CAP) and Black Sea Mountains. This study focuses on the formation period of the drainage system of the Kızılırmak River in the Cappadocia region, which is situated in the middle of the CAP. The Upper Pliocene-Quaternary geological and geomorphological stratigraphy of the Cappadocia region was revised with new findings and those of previous studies. In this study, the oldest terrace (Sünnetli Tepe Terrace, T0) of the Kızılırmak River was identified 214 m above the current river level. The terrace deposit is located between the Pliocene lacustrine Kışladağ Limestone Member (~5–2.7 Ma) and the ~2.7 Ma Valibaba Tepe ignimbrite. A minimum age for the terrace deposits was provided by the Valibaba Tepe ignimbrite, which caps the terrace. Therefore, the terrace T0 revealed that the Kızılırmak River drainage system existed in the eastern part of the CAP after the deposition of the Kışladağ Limestone Member (~5–2.7 Ma ago) and before the formation of the Valibaba Tepe ignimbrite 2.7 Myr ago. Contrary to most previous studies, this finding shows that Valibaba Tepe ignimbrite cannot be included in the Late Miocene-Pliocene Ürgüp Formation, which formed under an extensional tectonic regime and was incised by the Kızılırmak River. The data obtained showed that 17 of the Kızılırmak River terraces that have formed since ~2.7 Ma have been preserved to the present day.

Investigation of Salanda Fault Zone, between Yesiloz and Gumuskent (Nevsehir-Turkey) with PSInSAR

“…According to the results of the PSInSAR analysis, when the annual velocities in the LOS direction obtained for the study area are examined, annual subsidence values up to -7.6 mm and annual uplift values up to 7.2 mm were determined. Doğan et al (2009), based on field observations, determined the erosion rate of the river along the Kızılırmak valley to be 0.08 mm/year during the last 2 million years. The highest rate of erosion was found to be 0.11 mm/year.…”

“…Along the Kızılırmak valley, where the Salanda Fault borders on one side, there are some studies on the fault ( Koçyiğit, (2003), Doğan et al, (2009), Doğan, (2011), Çiner et al, (2015. In addition, with the development of satellite and measurement technologies in recent years, studies to determine the amount of movement on fault lines have intensified (Biggs et al, 2007;Yavaşoğlu et al, 2011;Shirzaei and Bürgmann 2013;Wang and Johnson 2015;Rosu et al, 2015;He et al, 2019;Gürsoy et al, 2017;Liu and Zhao, 2020;Scott et al, 2020;Peterson et al, 2020;Howel et al, 2020).…”

Base-level poljes in the Sivas gypsum karst, Türkiye

“…The establishment of the Kızılırmak River drainage system has an important role in the geomorphological evolution of the region. The late Miocene-early Pliocene closed basins of the Central Anatolia were connected to the external drainage in the Early Pliocene by the Kızılırmak River drainage system (Doğan and Şenkul, 2020;Brocard et al, 2021). The Meraküm lacustrine limestone, which forms a cover in the Sivas Basin, indicates the presence of a Pliocene lake in this area (Poisson et al, 1996;Çiner et al, 2002;Doğan and Özel, 2005;Legeay et al, 2019;Doğan and Şenkul, 2020;Brocard et al, 2021;Gökkaya et al, 2021).…”

“…The late Miocene-early Pliocene closed basins of the Central Anatolia were connected to the external drainage in the Early Pliocene by the Kızılırmak River drainage system (Doğan and Şenkul, 2020;Brocard et al, 2021). The Meraküm lacustrine limestone, which forms a cover in the Sivas Basin, indicates the presence of a Pliocene lake in this area (Poisson et al, 1996;Çiner et al, 2002;Doğan and Özel, 2005;Legeay et al, 2019;Doğan and Şenkul, 2020;Brocard et al, 2021;Gökkaya et al, 2021). The basalt flows, which crop out along the margins of the Kızılırmak Valley in the west of Sivas (northwest of Lake Tuzla) and cover the Upper Miocene deposits, were dated as an approximately 4,22 Ma in age (Brocard et al, 2021).…”