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The Lake Basins of South-west Anatolia

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Landscapes and Landforms of Turkey

Part of the book series: World Geomorphological Landscapes ((WGLC))

Abstract

The part of south-west Anatolia called the “Lake District” neighbouring the Mediterranean region of Turkey, includes nine large and over twenty small lakes that are mostly tectonic and some karstic in origin. These lacustrine basins are disseminated within depressions of the Taurus Mountains that are part of the Alpine–Himalayan belt. Here, the Taurus makes a morphological curve towards the north (Isparta Angle or Bend in the literature) due to the collision of the African and Anatolian plates during the early Neogene. The curvation resulted in depressions convenient for lakes. The largest freshwater lakes of the country (Beyşehir and Eğirdir), the most saline ones (Acıgöl and Salda), the slightly saline ones (Akşehir and Burdur) and the deepest ones (Burdur and Salda) occur here together in the same area, most probably because of special characteristics of drainage systems, source rocks and the above-mentioned tectonic development. Altitudes of lakes are around 850–1100 m a.s.l. The region, however, is mountainous and some peaks are above 2500 m, making the region attractive for settlements since early Neolithic time (e.g. Suberde ca 7500–7000 cal. BC, Erbaba 6500–6000 cal. BC, Eflatunpınarı 1300–1200 cal. BC).

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Acknowledgements

One of the authors (NK) is grateful to Yaşar Suludere, Zeynep Ataselim, Alper Gürbüz, Sonay Boyraz-Arslan, Özden İleri, Esra Gürbüz, Onur T. Yücel, Özgür Yedek, Ediz Kırman and Ezgi Güllü for cooperation on lake studies for years and for helps on the preparation of some figures of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geological Engineering Department, Ankara University, 06830, Gölbaşı, Ankara, Turkey

    Nizamettin Kazancı

  2. Faculty of Science and Engineering, Plymouth University, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon, PL48AA, UK

    Neil Roberts

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  1. Nizamettin Kazancı
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Correspondence to Nizamettin Kazancı .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Physical Geography (LGP, UMR 8591), CNRS, Universities of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Paris 12 U-Pec, Meudon, France

    Catherine Kuzucuoğlu

  2. Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Attila Çiner

  3. Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey

    Nizamettin Kazancı

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Kazancı, N., Roberts, N. (2019). The Lake Basins of South-west Anatolia. In: Kuzucuoğlu, C., Çiner, A., Kazancı, N. (eds) Landscapes and Landforms of Turkey. World Geomorphological Landscapes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03515-0_15

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