Sedimentary records of past earthquakes in Boraboy Lake during the last ca 600 years (North Anatolian Fault, Turkey)

• Four mass-wasting event deposits are detected in Boraboy Lake sedimentary record.
• Three events temporally correlate with the historical earthquakes, and one does not.
• Seismically and non-seismically induced mass-wasting deposits are compared.
• Seismically-induced mass-wasting deposits are relatively more heterogeneous.
• The record contributes to distinguish large regional earthquakes from the small ones.

Multiproxy sedimentological analyses along 4.9 m-long sequence of Boraboy Lake, which is located on the central eastern part of the North Anatolian Fault (NAF), reveal the sedimentary traces of past large earthquakes in the region. The lake has a relatively large catchment area (10 km2) compared to its size (0.12 km2), which renders sedimentation sensitive to heavy rain/storm events. Accordingly, the background sedimentation, which is composed of faintly laminated reddish/yellowish brown clayey silt, is frequently interrupted by organic-rich intercalations probably due to heavy rain/storm events transporting terrestrial plant remains from the densely vegetated catchment. In addition to frequent organic-rich intercalations, the background sedimentation is interrupted by four mass-wasting deposits (MWD) of which thickness range is between 15 and 50 cm. High-resolution ITRAX μXRF data confirms higher homogeneity along the MWDs (E1–E4) compared to the background sedimentation. Based on 137Cs and 210Pbxs dating and radiocarbon chronology, three MWDs detected in Boraboy sequence (E2, E3 and E4) temporally correlate with large historical earthquakes along the NAF; the 1943 Tosya (Ms = 7.6) and/or 1942 Niksar-Erbaa (Ms = 7.1), the 1776 Amasya-Merzifon and the 1668 North Anatolian (Ms = 7.9) earthquakes. The youngest MWD in the sequence (E1), which is dated to early 2000s, does not correlate with any strong earthquake in the region. This MWD was probably a single mass-wasting event due to routine overloading and oversteepening on the delta front formed by the main inlet of the lake. In subaqueous paleoseismology, coevality of multi-location mass-wasting events is used as a criterion to assign a seismic triggering mechanism, and to rule out mass-wasting events due to routine overloading/oversteepening of subaqueous slopes. Within this context, Boraboy sequence provides a valuable example to discuss sedimentological imprints of single- vs. multi-source MWDs.