Shaking Good Land(scape)s into Bad Lands: the role of inherited tectonic structure

Summary

Badlands are landforms that develop into a range
of weakly consolidated fine-grained sediments within steep slopes and highly
dense drainage systems as a function of (sub)surface erosion and sedimentation.
The concept of badland development has become increasingly relevant over the
past few decades as their formation with respect to global change is of
interest in various earth science disciplines. Both long- and short-term
processes play a role in badland landscape evolution, which consequently lead
to development of specific erosive landforms. To unravel these processes and their
combined role, this NWO-funded project questions the genesis of a badland
landscape in a Mediterranean setting, the Kula Badlands in western Turkey with
a multidisciplinary approach. The past two-decade geological research in the
study area had a focus on fluvial dynamics. This thesis aims to link the
existing framework to the badland development with systematic field-based
structural and geological mapping, Quaternary geochronological dating and
dynamic landscape evolution modelling.