GEOMETRY AND STRUCTURAL EVOLUTION OF EXTENSIONAL FAULTS AND FOLDS IN THE DENIZLI BASIN, SOUTHWESTERN TURKEY

The Denizli Basin is located in the easternmost part of the West Anatolia Extended Terrane. It is bounded by the Pamukkale fault zone to the NE, the Babadag and Honaz fault zones to the SW. The faults that bound the Denizli Basin were probably initiated during the Late-Miocene to Early Pliocene and are still active. The Basin contains Upper Miocene to Plio-Quaternary sediments in fault contact with the predominantly mica-schist metamorphic rocks of the Menderes Massif. The Upper Miocene rocks include lacustrine limestones and evaporitic sediments grading into clay-marn interbedded fine grained sedimentary rock units. The overlying Plio-Quaternary rocks represent a fining upward sedimentary sequence of pebble-cobble conglomerates to fine grained sandstone of a fluvial sedimentary environment.

We have constructed several NE-SW trending structural cross-sections across the Denizli Basin. The cross-sections contain all the structural elements of a typical extensional basin including a well-developed large scale roll-over anticline and associated structures. The anticline trends N60W to N80W and is parallel to the strike of the Babadag fault. It plunges to the NW and SE with a low angle of plunge. The basin also includes two large antithetic faults and several synthetic faults to the north of the town of Babadag. The NW-SE trending Karakova horst is controlled by a synthetic fault to the SW and by an antithetic fault to the NW. The northwesterly trending Pamukkale fault zone is made out of the northeasternmost antithetic faults of the Denizli Basin and contains travertine deposits along its overlapping branches.