12 October 2010

Güvem geoheritage site, Turkey

Posted by Callan Bentley

Looks like I’m late to the party…

While I was away, apparently the geoblogosphere went on a rampage of cooling columns. Everyone was posting images of their favorite columnar joints, and I was left out in the cold. Let me remedy that now. As it turns out, I was visiting some columns while everyone else was writing about them. Here are some images from the Güvem area of Turkey, north of Ankara, where there are a mix of late Miocene lake sediments and intercalated volcanic rocks, including these basalt flows. We stopped to visit them last Wednesday on our way to the North Anatolian Fault:

guvem_columns11

The dark entablature looms above:guvem_columns01

A nice central panel with a good cross-section of the flow: guvem_columns03

Around the corner, some more:
guvem_columns04

I ran across the street (and a stream) to check out a similar exposure there:guvem_columns05

Zooming in:guvem_columns06

Close-up of a few columns (with my hand for scale):guvem_columns08

Looking up along the columns:guvem_columns09

And a few more shots of the scene:guvem_columns10

guvem_columns02

A full list of Turkish geoheritage sites may be found at the end of this document. Lockwood maintained a list of the other blog posts in this meme here, which I’ll quote below since it’s so nicely laid out already:

Geotripper, here, here and here,
Sam at Geology Blues
Phillip, also at Geology Blues
Silver Fox, and another columnar post here.
Glacial Till and another!
Life in Plane Light: Squashed columns!
Aaron at Got The Time
Geology Rocks
Dana at En Tequila Es Verdad
Cujo 359 (see comment on Dana’s post for description)
Wayne at Earthly Musings has a gorgeous photo of columns below the rapids at Lava Falls in Grand Canyon.
MB Griggs at The Rocks Know has photos of what may well be the most perfect columns in the world.
Jessica, AKA Tuff Cookie, showcases a variety in different rock types.
Hypocentre finds columns in a very unlikely place, as well as a spectacular photo of radiating columns.
Dave Tucker at Northwest Geology Field Trips displays precisely one slew of columnar displays in Washington State.
Dave Bressan at History of Geology shares the first printed image of columnar basalts, from 1565.
A couple more variations from Dana’s and my driving about W. Oregon.
Dr. Jerque has some spectacular examples from the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Silver Fox Has another (better than mine) photo of horizontal columns in a set of dikes, and points out a couple more links to columny goodness (not to be confused with calumny, which is not good)
Dan McShane offers some more Washington State columns.
Garry Hayes, who deserves credit for starting this meme (see first links in the list, above), adds yet another set of photos from the opening of the Atlantic Ocean, and a lovely guest photo by Ivan Ivanyvienen, of columnar jointing in rhyolite at the San Juan Precordillera.
Update, October 4: Eric Klemetti- who did his doctoral work just down the street from where I’m sitting- has joined the fray. (Also, check out the links readers have left in the comments)
Helena Heliotrope at Liberty, Equality and Geology shows off some more Washington columns.
Chris and Anne at Highly Allochthonous each toss in a photo- Tokatee Falls looks awesome!
Some more Cape Perpetua jointed dike photos from Cujo359, and Devil’s Churn– again, numerous dikes with horizontal columns.