STRAIN PARTITIONING ALONG THE BABADAG FAULT ZONE, DENIZLI GRABEN, SOUTHWESTERN TURKEY

The Denizli Graben covers about 1500 km2 area in the southwestern Turkey. It trends NE-SW and is bounded by the Babadag fault zone to the SW. The fault zone shows all the characteristics of a detachment fault in the Babadag area; it separates the metamorphic rocks in its footwall from sedimentary rocks in its hanging wall and has a low angle of dip The large displacement along this detachment partitions by high angle normal faults in the Denizli area.

This study is aimed at providing a better understanding of how strain partitions along the Babadag fault zone before it dies out in along the southwestern margin of the Denizli Graben. We have mapped and area of about 50 km2 along where several splays of the Babadag fault zone are well exposed. We have also collected 30 samples from the fault rocks along these splays for petrographic and electron microprobe analysis. The fault rocks will be examined in terms of their ductile and brittle shear sense indicators.

The high angle normal fault splays of the Babadag fault displace the Quaternary rock deposits including the famous Denizli travertine deposits which are concentrated in the areas where fault splays overlap each other. This indicates that these faults are Quaternary in age. They are also seismically active. The movements along these faults have caused many small earthquakes in the Denizli area.