Development of a new technique for geological investigation using DTM data:: an example in western Turkey

The topographic features formed by factors such as altitude, tectonic movement, lithology and others were analysed quantitatively by a new technique in this study on rift valleys in western Turkey. This technique calls for the determination of the altitude and vertical geologic movements in long-wavelength components after the separation of the short- and long-wavelength components of the two-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) based on a digital terrain model (DTM). The location of active faults can be inferred from the magnitude of the anomalies of altitudinal dispersion and the position of the anomalies, and it is also inferred that the values of the anomalies are related to the displacement of the faults. The results have been checked in the field and it was shown that this technique is very effective for structural analysis.