Sedimentary records of active faulting in Kumburgaz basin, sea of Marmara

Sea of Marmara (SoM) is located at the west part of the ~1600 km long North Anatolian Fault (NAF) being a conduit between Black Sea and Aegean Sea. SoM contains five sedimentary basins at the northern border due to active tectonic regime of NAF. 2500 years long historical earthquake history is recorded which has destroyed cities and caused human loss within ~150 major earthquakes. Most active branch of the NAF in SoM is the Northern Branch playing the fundamental role in forming the tectonically active sedimentary basins which had become a perfect archive to preserve and a spectacular laboratory to examine the earthquake-triggered depositions. In subaqueous paleoseismology studies, sediment-gravity flow deposits are often used as a method to establish earthquake history of the related region. The term seismoturbidite is earthquake-triggered turbidites which have the particular stratigraphical, sedimentological and geochemical characteristics. However, the distinctive features could not very well be fully explained or described yet thus, this is the starting point of the thesis in which to ensure a proper description for distinctive features of term. MARsite (2014) cruise is recovered sediments cores by "pour quoi pas?" to establish a multi-disciplinary study in SoM in order to investigate tectonic, oceanographic history. Thesis contains one piston core and several seismic reflection profiles from the MARsite project. Experiments and observations are executed in the East Mediterranean Centre for Oceanography and Limnology (EMCOL) laboratories. Radiocarbon analysis is executed by CEREGE radiocarbon laboratory. One of the locations which is chosen for coring is Kumburgaz Basin where Central segment of NNAF passes, especially interested because the complicated seismicity of the segment. Holocene history of the Kumburgaz basin is not fully revealed both seismically and oceanographically therefore, a multi-parameter study has executed on seismoturbidite layers by using physical, geochemical, textural and paleontological methods to find out; (1) unravel 7000 years long tectonic history of the region, (2) determine concept of seismoturbidite by accentuating distinctive features, (3) find the answer the ambiguous behavior of the Central Segment whether it is creeping of locked. Recovered piston core CS-01 contains 28 seismoturbidites layers. By using MSCL, XRF, grain-size and smear slides we obtained sedimentological aspects of the depositions. Inverse graded turbidites are identified and their deposition dynamics are explained by presence of bathymetric barrier in Kumburgaz Basin. Amalgamated turbidites (stacked turbidites) are detected by using elemental proxies which is also precursor for the determination of the time interval for sediment-gravity flow deposits. Most important feature for seismoturbidite which is seiche effect, has been identified almost all turbidite units in the CS-01. Water oscillations are mainly caused by earthquakes which affect the sedimentary structures in the successions so that, most of the subunits of turbidites are missing because of constant seiche controlled laminations. Smear slide study showed species whose being habitants in infralittoral and upper circalittoral sections of the submarine environment, are identified proving that sediment-gravity flow deposits initiated entrainment from the upper slope region (circalittoral and further up) in SoM. Lastly, 8 out of 14 ages which have been obtained, is used for age model by using Bayesian statistics method. Core however contains sediments loss from the top ~830 years, model includes the date between BP 830 to BP 7170 years. Therefore 6000 years of sedimentary records is obtained and first 10 seismoturbidites are correlated with historical records.