Preliminary note
The area mapped is delimited by the watershed line of the endoreic Plateau of Central Anatolia. It means that the river network supplies drainage systems with no superficial outlet to the sea. The choosen area has a geographical coherence as it corresponds roughly to lands where climate is of a continental type, with less than 400 mm annual rainfall.
1. Plains
1.1. Wetlands
1.1.1. Perennial freshwater lakes.
1.1.2. Perennial salt lakes (Tuz gölü ; Yay gölü in the Sultansazligi plain) and seasonal salt lakes (Geren near Karapinar, Tuzla lake in the Sultansazligi plain, Gez gölü in the Tuz gölü plain).
1.1.3. Freshwater to brackish seasonal lakes: Sugla and Akgöl lakes.
1.1.4. Fresh to brackish marshes and backswamps: Konya-Meram, Karaman and Yarma marshes, Hotamis lake in the Konya plain; Sultansazligi marshes and Develi marshes in the Sultansazligi plain.
1.2. Lake bottom. Upper Pleistocene impermeable marls (lakes dried at the end of the Pleniglacial). Their top soils being very poor in nutritive elements and the clay being very easily waterlogged, most of it used to be dedicated as range lands for extensive animal husbandry.
1.3. Alluvial fans, built in two main episodes during the Holocene. Silty and gravely formations, they are easy to plough and are good as crop lands because of their organic matter content and of their lightness, and also because the freshwater input by rivers is perennial.
1.4. Quaternary depressions, of volcanic origin in Cappadocia and karstic origin in the South of the Konya plain. Filled with silty-sandy-gravely deposits of fluviatile origin (easy to plough; their agricultural productivity depends mainly on their organic matter content and on their iron-alumine-rich red clay content when karstic in origin); they may be good crop land when irrigated.
2.1. Taurus ranges (up to 1000 to 2000 m relative height). They act as a topographic and climatic barrier, and also as a water reservoir (melt water). They are composed of thick Jurassic and Cretaceous marine limestones and deep-sea volcanic rocks, sometimes overlapped by Tertiary clays and conglomerates. They were tectonically uplifted during Tertiary and Quaternary eras. Karstification is ancient (from the Tertiary on ?) and intense on the limestone surfaces (*).
2.2. Eroded rolling and/or flattened residual reliefs dominating and surrounded by the Neogene lacustrine limestone cover (*).
2.3. Lacustrine Neogene limestone plateaux. The relative altitudes are low (+ 50 à 200 m) and their topography is usually quite flat. These soft limestones are also karstic, thus very dry on the surface, except for poljes, (low depressions seasonally flooded) (*).
3.1. Old volcanic complexes
3.1.1. The ignimbritic plateaux of Cappadocia.
3.1.2. Montainous massifs
Mio-Pliocene: The Keçiboyduran and Melendiz dag complex (southern Cappadocia): ca 6 to 3 Myrs old.
3.2. Middle and Upper Pleistocene stratovolcanoes: The Göllüdag, the Karadag, the Hasan dag and the Erciyes dag.
3.3. Upper Pleistocene 'nuées ardentes' deposits of the Hasan dag and Erciyes dag.
3.4. The Acigöl eruptive complex composed of a caldeira (Middle Pleistocene) associated with scoria cones (Middle and Upper Pleistocene) and with younger (Pleniglacial to Mid-Holocene) rhyolitic domes and maars (hydrothermal activity).
(*) Karst morphology: In the limestone areas presenting karstic morphology, the underground river network is more important than the superficial one, and valleys are usually dry because of the streams being diverted towards the underground network. The main process of landform evolution being the dissolution of carbonates, these regions present specific features such as numerous caves, avens, poljes, swallow holes etc. The associated top soil is the terra rossa (red clay), which is often eroded from the summits and is now found reworked on the slopes and accumulated on the bottom of dry valleys.