RECONSTRUCTION OF PAST PRECIPITATION IN SOUTH-WEST TÜRKİYE FROM VARVED SEDIMENTS OF KÖYCEĞİZ LAKE

Date

2025-11-27

Author

Karaman, Orhan

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High-resolution paleoclimate records offer valuable insights into historical climate changes and current climate trends that extend beyond the scope of instrumental data. Among various paleoclimate records, annually laminated lacustrine sediments, known as varves, allow for the extraction of finely resolved climate proxies and provide precise chronological control. This study aims to construct a high-resolution past precipitation reconstruction from the varved sediments of Köyceğiz Lake in southwestern Türkiye. A 124.95 cm-long gravity core was analyzed using ITRAX micro-XRF core scanning at a 0.2 mm resolution. Varve counting determined that the sedimentary record spans a total of 609 years. The ITRAX data, corresponding to winter-spring laminae, examined for potential correlations with precipitation measurements from meteorological stations in Muğla, Köyceğiz, Dalaman and Marmaris. Due to the natural interdependencies between geochemical variables, five Principal Components (PC) were created using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on the dataset. Subsequently, these components were used in a Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) model to create a precipitation reconstruction spanning approximately 500 years. The resulting paleoclimate trend was compared with 3 different reconstructions, created with different methods obtained from different studies, across Türkiye. In conclusion, the reconstruction generated within this study was shown to exhibit the same trend as other reconstructions obtained from the three other studies. It is concluded that the precipitation reconstruction generated in this study is consistent with both historical records and existing paleoclimatic studies.

Subject Keywords

Paleoclimatology, Precipitation Reconstruction, Varve, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Multiple Linear Regression (MLR)

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/118198

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis