Timing of Glacier Retreat on Mt. Davraz by Cosmogenic Chlorine-36 in the Western Turkey

The Taurus Mountain Range extends parallel to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. It hosts lofty mountains (>3000 m above sea level, a.s.l.) carved by glaciers in the Late Pleistocene. Despite the recent studies in Anatolia, Mt. Davraz (2635 m a.s.l.) has not been studied in detail and its glacial chronology was lacking. This study presents our first findings of the glacial history, origin and geochronology of Mt. Davraz, which is located SW of Eğirdir Lake (915 m a.s.l.), 100 km north of Antalya city. Tectonics, karstification, glaciation, and periglaciation have led a distinctive geomorphology of the area. The main landscape of the area is predominantly shaped by paleoglaciers. Cirques are the dominant glacial erosional landforms, and most of them were developed on the northern slopes of Mt. Davraz. Based on the topographical limitations, cirque paleoglaciers could not to transformed into valley glaciers. Although it is one of the lowest mountains in the Taurus Mountain Range, it has a large hummocky field with an area of about 3 km² on the northern slope. It was developed by a paleo-ice cap. There is also a smaller hummocky field deformed by a rock glacier advancements on the E-NE slopes of the mountain. In order to understand the timing of paleoglaciations, we obtained 6 cosmogenic 36Cl surface exposure ages from the moraine boulders on hummocky field. Based on the preliminary results, Mt. Davraz hummocky field yielded sequential retreat history; the eastern hummocky field deposited their moraines at 21.7 ± 1.5 ka ago, while the western hummocky field at 17.7 ± 1.2 ka ago. Our results show that the glaciers started to retreat by the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and continued to the earlier stages of Late-glacial.

This work was supported by TÜBİTAK 118Y052 and 118C329 projects.