Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
SEDIMENTARY GEOLOGY, cilt.81, ss.243-252, 1992 (SCI-Expanded)
The sediments of the Gildirli Formation in the Karaisali embayment of the Adana Basin, southern Turkey, records the evolution, under tectonic control at a complex triple junction, of an alluvial fan into a fan-delta during a rapid Early Miocene transgression. The alluvial fan is represented by the lower part of the formation (Cakmak Member) and is characterized by an internal architecture, recording an overall progradation of the coarse proximal fan conglomerates over distal fine-grained sediments. The conglomerates contain mostly Upper Cretaceous limestone clasts of various sizes derived from the faulted mountain front of the Taurus range where this limestone is widely exposed. This active mountain front delimited the Karaisali embayment to the north and provided, during the fault activity, abundant coarse clasts to this area throughout the deposition of both the alluvial fan and the overlying fan-delta sediments. The production of fine detritus during the faulting was very limited and therefore this source contributed little fine grain detritus to the sediments. Provenance studies indicate that the fine clastics in the Gildirli Formation were carried by streams during periods of active faulting and also during periods of tectonic quiescence from a far-distant source in the hinterlands of the Taurus Mountains. The recurrent activity along the northern boundary-fault resulted in the intercalation of these fine clastics with the predominant coarse sediments in this formation. When the study area was flooded from the south by a rapidly deepening Early Miocene sea, the accumulation of all these sediments took place in a fan-delta environment. The fan-delta sediments constitute the upper parts of the Gildirli Formation (Kabalaktepe Member) and display an inverse facies pattern in which foreset beds overlie topsets and hence an upward-fining and deepening sequence. This deviation from a genetic upward-coarsening sequence of a typical marine delta was perhaps the result of a rapid relative rise in sea-level, due to tectonically induced subsidence of the area possibly coupled with a short-term global sea-level rise in the Burdigalian.