The Central Anatolian Volcanic Province (CAVP, Türkiye), situated in a post-collisional setting, encompasses widespread polygenetic and monogenetic volcanism since the mid-to-late Miocene. Monogenetic volcanoes are clustered in six distinct volcanic regions across the CAVP, displaying well-exposed deposits and including many proxies for understanding the volcanological, petrological, and even paleoenvironmental evolution of the region. Maars are the lesser-known edifices among these volcanoes, and their presence has been mostly hidden in the local maps and reports, except for a few studies published in international journals. However, maars in the CAVP are prone to provide many insights into many questions raised in the recent advancement of maar literature globally. In addition, the potential hazard assessment of volcanically and tectonically active CAVP certainly needs further detailed information from these small-volume products of phreatomagmatic eruptions.
This thesis employs a comprehensive and integrated approach in three main chapters (Chapters 2-4), preceded by a general introduction (Chapter 1) and followed by a concluding synthesis (Chapter 5), incorporating field- and UAV-based mapping, morphometry, grain-size distribution, componentry, geoelectrical imaging, petrography and geochemistry (whole-rock, glass, and mineral) to address significant questions in the maar literature, such as the discernible correlations between magma composition and substrate geology with respect to maar morphology, the role of optimal scaled depth (OSD), and fragmentation processes in maars, as well as many other local questions raised in the CAVP literature. Furthermore, the thesis investigates the differences between felsic and mafic maars, highlighting the importance of explosion depth, vent migration, and hydrogeological conditions in their formation.
The systematic survey of maar volcanism within the CAVP introduces 18 well-exposed maars and a few explosion craters to the literature with their detailed maps, well-defined representative stratigraphies, and compositions, as well as further details on their eruption dynamics integrated with the global data (Chapter 2). In-situ comparison of mafic and felsic maars within the Acıgöl caldera incorporated with extensive field observations and integrative laboratory analyses shed new light on the main relation between these compositionally distinct but mutually common volcanoes (Chapter 3). The complex behaviour of monogenetic clusters is one of the best representative features of the CAVP, and the Karapınar Monogenetic Field provides an excellent opportunity not only to examine these phenomena but also to decipher the crustal and mantle processes in the evolution of Plio-Quaternary basaltic volcanism across the CAVP (Chapter 4).
