Karst landscapes in South-Eastern Turkey: potential of cave speleothems to record the Last Glacial Maximum and Holocene climate

Abstract

Field investigation in the eastern flanks of Taurus mountains in south-eastern Turkey, show a variety of karst landscapes, comprising polje, ponors, canyons, and multi-cave levels. The eastern Anatolian region is in an active tectonic margin traversed by both the Euphrates and Tigris headwaters. In the region, some of the Tigris river tributaries are diverted by underground karst drainage. Many cave-level systems and abandoned ponors, demonstrate that the karst dynamic is related to/or evolving with the surficial drainage. In this frame, the Birkleyn and Bozoba caves (Dicle district) have been investigated to evaluate their potential for geomorphological and paleoclimate studies. Indeed, both caves display preserved detrital sediments and speleothems, while their location in the eastern Taurus mountains make both caves suitable sites for regional paleoclimate reconstruction as reconstructed by the geochemical study and dating of speleothems. The first Uranium-Thorium ages of Bozoba-1 and Bozoba-2 show a start of growth at 22.4 ± 0.2 ka BP and 25.1 ± 0.5 ka BP respectively. Further dating of Bozoba-2 at 2.8 ± 0.2 ka BP and Birk-2 at 0.8 ± 0.2 ka BP shows rapid calcite growth during the late Holocene. As a result of these preliminary dates, we shall conduct geochronological and geochemical analyses on the sampled stalagmites, to reconstruct the climatic variations during the Last Glacial Maximum and late Holocene periods as recorded by the eastern Taurus range.