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Selma Unlu, Istanbul University (Turkey)
Bedri Alpar, Istanbul University (Turkey)
Yildiz Altinok, Istanbul University (Turkey)
Cenk Yaltirak, Istanbul Technical University (Turkey)
Naside Ozer, Istanbul University (Turkey)
Sena Akcer, Istanbul Technical University (Turkey)
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Tsunami deposits along the Mediterranean coasts of Turkey are not well documented, because the landscape has a low preservation potential for 'event deposits'. One of the most popular beaches of the eastern Mediterranean Sea is the Patara delta beach, which is named after a famous ancient city, at southern Turkey. It is about 12.3 km long between two capes, named NW and SW Inceburun, flanked by the Babada (1969 m) and Dumanlıda (1956 m) mountains, respectively. Its modern beach has a swash zone and backshore sub-environments. Backshore areas, between shoreline and sand dunes, are generally uncovered by vegetation and ranges mostly between 50 and 150 meters. The delta beach is built up by a combination of physical processes, the fluvial and terrigenous input of the Eşen River and the longshore wave and current regimes of the sea. The Eşen River transports only relatively finer-grained sediments into the sea, because a narrow pass trap coarser-grained sediments in the upper and middle reaches of the river bed and prevent them to be transported into the Patara plain. It is well known that the city Patara was the largest and most important harbor and played a major role in the ancient Lycian civilization. The harbor was still active as a small estuary at the end XVth century. Today the area of the ancient harbor is covered by a semi-dry lagoon covered by reeds. In order to investigate tsunami related deposit preserved in this semi-dry lagoon behind the Patara delta beach, engine core studies were performed. Core samples have been subjected to GC/MS and FTIR analyses for biogeochemical assessments. Marine-sourced organic matters (e.g. lipid components, sterols and long chain ketones), geochemical properties (e.g. microbial signatures and algal remains), presence of marine biomarkers (e.g. 24-n-propylcholestane, multibranched acyclic C20 and C25 hydrocarbons) and deterministic ratios (e.g. abundance of S-containing compounds vs. pristane:phytane ratio) have been defined. The samples were collected within the scope of EU FP6 TRANSFER project (Tsunami Risk ANd Strategies For the European Region).
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