PURE AND APPLIED GEOPHYSICS, vol.177, no.7, pp.3243-3264, 2020 (SCI-Expanded)
Quaternary Mount Nemrut stratovolcano, having a spectacular summit caldera and associated lakes, is located north of the Bitlis-Zagros suture zone, Eastern Turkey. Although much attention has been paid to its geology, morphology, history and biology, a detailed geophysical investigation has not been performed in this special region. Thus, we attempted to characterize the stratovolcano and the surroundings using total field aeromagnetic anomalies. Potential field data processing techniques helped us to interpret geologic sources causing magnetic signatures. Resulting image maps obtained from some linear transformations and a derivative-based technique revealed general compatibility between the aeromagnetic anomalies and the near-surface geology of the study area. Some high amplitude magnetic anomalies observed north of the Nemrut caldera rim are associated with the latest bimodal volcanic activity marked by lava fountains and comenditic-basaltic flows occurred along the rift zone. After minimizing the high-frequency effects, a pseudogravity-based three-dimensional inversion scheme revealed that the shallowest deep-seated sources are located about 3.0 km below the ground surface. Two-dimensional normalized full gradient solutions also exposed the depths of these anomaly sources, in good agreement with the inversion results. This first geophysical study performed through aeromagnetic anomalies clearly gave insights into some main magnetized structures of the Mount Nemrut stratovolcano.