Rock fall assessment thorough the ihlara valley (Aksaray)

Since the Ihlara Valley is a tourist attraction territory and hundreds of thousands of tourists visiting the valley each year, preventing the hazards caused by mass movements is significant for unwanted casualities and injuries. In this study, precautions are suggested to determine hazards caused by rock falls and to decrease these hazards especially where the touristic activity is dense through the Ihlara Valley. Crop survey and guideline investigations are carried out for the purpose of determining detailed joint features which are the most significant parameters for rock falls; thus the data like type, condition, spacing, persistence, orientation, density and number of joints, filling material, roughness and waviness of the joint surface, water leakage and block dimensions were collected. Rock falls of the Kızılkaya ignimbrite expected through the Ihlara Valley were modelled by two dimensional rock fall analysis and different falling scenarios were created considering different block sizes. Probable impacted territories are assigned by interpreting the endpoints of the blocks, horizontal velocity and total kinetic energy values obtained from the analysis, hazardous territories were determined and an hazard map is produced. Key words: Ihlara Valley, Rock fall, Two dimensional modelling