Sedimentary facies, depositional environments and palaeogeographic evolution of the Neogene Denizli Basin, SW Anatolia, Turkey

The Denizli Basin (southwestern Anatolia, Turkey) contains a record of environmental changes dating since the Early Miocene. Detailed facies analysis of the Neogene formations in this half-graben enables us to document successive depositional regimes and palaeogeographic settings. Sedimentation commenced in the Early Miocene with the deposition of alluvial-fan and fluvial facies (K?z?lburun Formation). At this stage, alluvial fans sourced from elevated areas to the south prograded towards the basin centre. The Middle Miocene time saw the establishment of marginal lacustrine and wetland environments followed by the development of a shallow lake (Sazak Formation). The uppermost part of this unit consists of evaporitic saline lake and saline mudflat facies that grade upward into brackish lacustrine deposits of Late Miocene-Pliocene age (Kolankaya Formation). The lake became shallower at the end of the Pliocene time, as is indicated by expansion shoreface/foreshore facies. In the Early Quaternary, the Denizli Basin was transformed into a graben by the activation of ESE-trending normal faults. Alluvial fans were active at the basin margins, whereas a meandering river system occupied the basin central part.Oxygen isotope data from carbonates in the successive formations show an alternation of wetter climatic periods, when fresh water settings predominated, and very arid periods, when the basin hosted brackish to hypersaline lakes. The Neogene sedimentation was controlled by an active, ESE-trending major normal fault along the basin's southern margin and by climatically induced lake-level changes. The deposition was more or less continuous from the Early Miocene to Late Pliocene time, with local unconformities developed only in the uppermost part of the basin-fill succession. The unconformable base of the overlying Quaternary deposits reflects the basin's transformation from a half-graben into a graben system.