Anatolia is characterized by well-defined boundaries such as the North and East Anatolian faults and relatively less known intra ‘plate’ structures. The relationship and relative importance of these two deformation regions, along the boundaries and within the interior of Anatolia, remains a matter of debate. This small piece of continental lithosphere is part of the Eastern Mediterranean, where broad scale tectonics are dominated by the interaction of the Nubian and Arabian plates with Eurasia. Anatolia is bounded by different tectonics regimes on all sides: continental convergence to the east, continental extension to the west, oceanic subduction further south and west in the Aeagan, and continental transform in the north. The evolution and present deformation of Anatolia are constrained by diverse geological, geophysical, and geodetic observations and have been explained by different hypotheses, such as (a) tectonic escape system caused by the post-collisional convergence of Eurasian and Arabian plates creating forces at its boundaries with gravitational potential differences of the Anatolian high plateau (b) asthenospheric flow dragging the circular flow of lithosphere from the Levant to Anatolia in the east and the Aegean in the west, (c) slab pull of the Hellenic subduction, (d) mantle upwelling underneath Afar and with the large-scale flow associated with a whole mantle, Tethyan convection cell, (e) or combinations of these mechanisms. Naturally, this setting generates frequent earthquakes with large magnitudes (M > 7), forming a natural laboratory on understanding the crustal deformation for various disciplines of active tectonics.
Multi-disciplinary studies, especially within the last three decades, have made great contributions to our understanding of the processes on the crustal deformation of Anatolia and the adjacent regions. With this session, we aim to bring together the recent findings of these studies, thus we welcome/invite contributions from a wide range of disciplines such as, but not limited to, neotectonics, seismology, tectonic geodesy (e.g. GNSS, InSAR), paleoseismology, tectonic geomorphology, remote sensing, structural geology and geodynamic modelling.
Invited talks:
- A. M. Celâl Şengör (İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, sengor@itu.edu.tr) - The Neotectonics of Turkey and its Aetiology
- Robert Reilinger (MIT, reilinge@erl.mit.edu) - Anatolia-Aegea at the junction of ocean subduction and continental collision