ABSTRACT
Soil degradation is perceived as a major threat in the Mediterranean region due to land use pattern and projected climate change. As the high altitudinal mountainous lands are sensitive lands, the land use patterns at Alaçam mountains were investigated in this study. The assessment of land use distribution is arranged with the altitude, exposure, slope and bedrock parameters. The spatial database of project was created using GRASS GIS open source software (GRASS Development Team, 2008). The scanned land use and main rock map of the project area rectified, digitized, and attributes of land use and bedrocks were entered into the database tables. Also raster SRTM3 data were imported into these databases for making physiographical factor (elevation, slope, aspect) maps. Our findings illustrated that the whole area of Alaçam mountains is 282 480 ha where most of the area of the mass is located between 700-1300 m asl with 200 585 ha corresponding to 71% of the whole area. We detected two kinds of mis-land use; (1) agricultural activities applied at the slopes above 17% (representing 35 220 ha) and agricultural activities applied on metamorphic rocks (representing 872 ha). Total misuse of lands reached 36 092 ha comprised 12.77% of the whole area.
ABSTRACT
In this study, nine species mainly distributed in Mediterranean (+ Aegean region) region of Turkey were investigated in terms of 15 morphological, 16 anatomical and 5 ecological characteristics. Those species are Orchis anatolica Boiss., Orchis italica Poiret, Orchis laxiflora Lam., Orchis morio L. subsp. morio, Orchis provincialis Balbis ex DC., Orchis purpurea Hudson, Orchis sancta L., Orchis simia Lam., Orchis tridentata Scop. In conclusion, we found that O. laxiflora was characterized by the longest plant height and O. purpurea had the biggest tuber; whereas O. italica was identified by the highest number of leafs and O. purpurea had the longest leaf length and widest leaf width. Additionally, the other species which were characterized by different morphological and anatomical parameters are as follow: O. sancta with the longest bract length, O. italica and O. simia with the longest sepal lengths, O. laxiflora with the shortest and widest labellum, O. simia with the longest petal length, O. sancta with longest caudiculum length, O. anatolica with the longest spur length and O. provincialis with the longest ovary length. Particularly, O. laxiflora and O. purpurea species present essential divergence from the aspect of anatomical features of leaf surface in comparison with the other species. Morphological and anatomical traits of the species were attributed to the habitat selections of the species since that character differs along with each species.
ABSTRACT
Orchis anatolica Boiss. is one of the Mediterranean species, which has wide distribution in Turkey. In this study, plant and soil samples of O. anatolica were taken from 26 natural populations in Turkey. There were one hundred ninety locality records in the Mediterranean region of Turkey, but we recorded two hundred sixteen localities thus adding twenty six new localities to the list. Twenty morphological parameters of O. anatolica were evaluated. The correlation coefficients between generative characters and vegetative characters were lower than the character groups of correlation coefficients between themselves. It is found from sea level upto 1700 m. Most common habitats of O. anatolica are macchie, forest lands and stony soils. The soils are loamy, clayey- loam and sandy-clayey- loam and rich in organic matter. The pH of the soils varies from 5.87 to 7.92. Although O. anatolica has wide distribution in Turkey, different types of land uses are posing a threat for it and restricting its distributional area. Lacking the legal regulations about conservation of the O. anatolica populations is one of the most striking requirement.
ABSTRACT
Heating effects on carbon and mineral nitrogen contents of soils within different land use types were investigated in this study. With this intention we collected soil samples from 3 different land use types which are abandoned agricultural lands (AAL), shrub land (SL) and Oak forest land (OFL) and are in neighborhood with each other. The sampling was made at mid-summer to provide a better correspondence between factual burning conditions as well. Soils are slightly acidic (pH between 4.60-5.72) and sandy, sandy loamy textured. At the study site the vegetation type is pasture at AAL, Cystus and Rubus sp. dominated shrubs at SL and mixture of Oak species such as Quercus petrea, Q. robur, Q. cerris and Q. frainetto at OFL. The results we found revealed that heating temperature has more remarkable effect on C losses and soil NH4 +-N re-mineralization and losses of NH4 +-N. Besides we could not detect remarkable differences between total N and NO3- amounts. Heating time created significant differences between NH4 +-N amounts for different land use types where SL soils showed significant difference for all temperature levels. Heating soils at 100oC created only slight differences at C and NH4 +-N budgets but heating at 200oC caused to striking results at NH4 +-N budgets and heating at 350oC led to only slight increase at NH4 +-N budget. As the temperature increased the C loss also increased linearly.
ABSTRACT
In this study some soil and forest floor characteristics of floodplain forest, thermophile forest and sand dune were investigated at Igneada, Turkey. In this context, surface soil samples were analyzed and compared to each other in the extension of soil physical, chemical properties and as plant nutrition environment. To investigate the soil characteristics soil samples were collected from 48 sampling point. The distribution of the soils revealed that remarkably physical soil properties figure the ordination of soils in principal component analysis (PCA). We concluded that floodplain forests have quite different soil properties from the thermophile forest and sand dunes under the continuous effect of surrounding thermophile forest land with less sandy proportion to soil texture 52.4 at floodplain forest, 64.0% at thermophile forest and 91.0% at sand dunes and highly organic carbon 5.619, 4.191 and 0.478% respectively at 0-5 cm depth and total nitrogen content 0.213, 0.078 and 0.056% for floodplain forest> thermophile forest> sand dune soils, respectively. Weight and organic matter contents of forest floor were significantly higher in the thermophile forests.