Morphotectonic Development of Anatolia and the Surrounding Regions


Yilmaz Y.

ACTIVE GLOBAL SEISMOLOGY: NEOTECTONICS AND EARTHQUAKE POTENTIAL OF THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN REGION, cilt.225, ss.11-91, 2017 (Hakemli Dergi) identifier

Özet

In Anatolia, the late-post orogenic deformation is still continuing severely today. The north-south compression initially deformed eastern Turkey. East and central Anatolia began to rise together. Slab break off of the northerly subducting plate and lithospheric delamination played a significant role in this. Compression then formed the North and East Anatolian transform faults. They defined the Anatolian Plate, which began escaping to the west. Major morphotectonic features, the peripheral mountains, the Pontides and the Taurides, and the western Anatolian horsts and grabens, have formed from this time onward. The transform faults played roles in the transfer of the stress. Compared to the east, the west of Anatolia has followed a different path of morphotectonic development. The region was a highland during the Early Miocene period, while eastern Anatolia was under shallow sea. The environments began to change in opposite ways from Late Miocene onward. Southerly retreat of the subducting eastern Mediterranean oceanic slab has generated north-south extension on the upper plate. As a result, the present morphology began to develop. The east-west trending horst and graben structures that dominate the landscape today began to form during later periods of the extension in the Quaternary.