The 800 cm long sequence from the Bereket provides the first detailed fire history in the western Taurus Mountains for the last three millennia. The main disturbances occurred during the Beyşehir Occupation Phase (BO Phase), a period of intensive polyculture and dated at Bereket from ca. 2230 to 1550 cal yr BP. Four phases of local and extra-local fire periods have been recorded at 2320–2240, 1985–1970, 1865–1820 cal yr BP and post-AD 1950. The fire history established for the BO Phase is complex, with fire periods alternating with periods without local fires, as is the case for the late BO Phase from 1820 until 1550 cal yr BP. It is suggested that the past agricultural practices including fires cause a higher soil erodibility than agricultural practices without fires. A climatic shift towards aridity during Roman times may have triggered the observed change in fire regime but local processes, mainly human disturbances, appear to be the proximal cause of all recorded changes. In the Bereket surroundings, fires led to a simplification of the vegetation structure, favouring soil erosion, pastures and intensive cultivation.

Relay ramps form at different scales in extensional terrains to accommodate the differential stretching among the overlapping bounding-normal fault segments. The major boundary structure of the Gediz Graben (SW Turkey) is segmented, with formation, evolution and active breaching of relay ramps. The Akçapınar relay ramp is an example of these processes that forms within a 2 km wide overlap zone between ∼ E–W-trending segments on the southern margin of the Gediz Graben. Change of structural style at the ramp area is clearly evident from variations in the orientation of fractures and faults of the relay ramp. As a site of local stress field anomaly, ∼ N–S-trending structures in the Akçapınar relay ramp are conformable with the extension that is parallel to the bounding faults of the relay ramp. These structures are also superimposed onto the ∼ E–W-trending regional structural style by an obvious cross-cutting relationship, suggesting both spatial and temporal variation of the state of stress at the ramp area during the relay ramp formation. The regional stress field and the resulting regional structural style characterize the earlier stages of ramp evolution, during which segment interaction is limited. As segment interaction and relay ramp formation advances towards the breaching phase, an anomalous local stress field arises and the relay ramp area experiences extension parallel to the bounding normal faults, that is, transverse to the regional direction of extension. This creates a new structural style at the ramp area.