Utilization of frequency ratio method for the production of landslide susceptibility maps: Karaburun Peninsula case, Turkey.

Geographical information systems (GIS) facilitate both current landslide mapping processes and the prediction of potential landslides that may be experienced in the future. Within the scope of the study, landslide susceptibility maps were created to reduce the damage of possible landslides in the Karaburun Peninsula of Izmir province. A landslide inventory map was produced from related databases in the first place, followed by the creation of parameter maps (elevation, aspect, slope, curvature, land use, vegetation cover, lithology, distance to roads, distance to rivers, and distance to fault lines). The frequency ratio (FR) method was utilized for producing the landslide susceptibility maps on a 5-level risk scale ranging from very low to very high-risk categories. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed for accuracy testing. The resulting landslide susceptibility map revealed that 3% and 46% of the study area had high- and medium-risk categories, and the low landslide risk areas comprised 47% of the region. These results provide important inputs to guide sustainable strategic and physical planning processes in the region, which has been declared a special protection area and is a popular destination for tourism activities and energy facilities.

Estimation of the water footprint of kiwifruit: in the areas transferred from hazelnut to kiwi.

Agriculture is the largest consumer of freshwater and plays a critical role in addressing global water scarcity. While numerous studies have focused on the water footprint (WF) of various agricultural products, little attention has been paid to changing cropping patterns and their impact on WF. Here, we investigate the impact of conversion from hazelnut fields to kiwi orchards on green, blue, and gray WF between 2010 and 2021 in Ordu, Turkey. Our results show a total increase of 803,901 tons WF for all green, blue, and gray WF. Compared to the previous situation, changing the agricultural product and growing kiwifruit on previously established hazelnut fields increases green WF by 372,106 tons and blue WF by 334,167 tons. Thus, the change of cultivation pattern could significantly contribute to the water scarcity in the area, and at the same time, the increase in WF. Although kiwi cultivation might be advantageous economically, this economic benefit might be an ecological disadvantage as kiwi production is highly dependent on limited blue water resources. Therefore, it is suggested to further promote the rain-fed product, the hazelnut.

Evaluation of comparing urban area land use change with Urban Atlas and CORINE data.

Urban Atlas (UA) data covering the large urban areas have been produced by the European Environment Agency for a variety of European countries including Turkey since 2006. The use of the UA data for the determination of spatiotemporal land use and density changes in urban areas. UA data of Eskisehir, Turkey, were used in order to detect the spatiotemporal changes between 2012 and 2018. CORINE data-based change detection and NDVI analysis were also made and compared with the results obtained from the UA data. The results based on the UA data revealed that the artificial surfaces in the study area increased by 17.65% and there was a 18.32% increase in the total amount of agricultural lands, natural lands, forests, and vegetation. Although CORINE data-based analyses showed a similar trend in land use/land cover changes, the amount of changes between 2012 and 2018 in CORINE and UA data-based analyses were found to be 4.99% and 17.55%, respectively. A 9.30% mismatch between the UA changes and NDVI difference data was also calculated. Research findings revealed that the utilization of the UA data in the urban territories would be advantageous especially in planning processes to detect and compare the changes in the artificial and non-artificial surfaces and NDVI analysis would be very supportive to control and compare the results. It is also concluded that this study may be a useful model to monitor the cities in accordance with the 2030 and 2050 policies of European Council on Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry.

The change detection in coastal settlements using image processing techniques: a case study of Korfez.

Coastal areas all over the world are usually exposed to intensive change and transformation processes resulting in a variety of natural, physical, and socio-economic problems. Körfez province, located along the Izmit Bay of Marmara Sea, Turkey, has been one of these coastal areas that has become a major point for industrial facilities and highly populated urbanized area since 1960s. Therefore, the analysis of the spatial changes in the land use patterns of the province has a critical role in the success of the physical planning processes and the protection of the coastal areas. In order to highlight this critical role, temporal change detection analysis for Körfez province covering a 6-year period and 5 land use classes was made using 2009 and 2015 SPOT imagery and thematic maps. Reclassified CORINE data, development plans, and land survey results were benefited for the supervised classification of the images. Four hundred eighty control points for each year were used to achieve a strong accuracy tested by Kappa coefficient. The spatio-temporal change detection results revealed a 22.5% and 2.3% decrease in agricultural lands and sea areas respectively, while there was an increase of 16.6% in forest-green areas, 6.4% in settlement areas, and 74.1% in lake areas. The results are believed to be significant input data to facilitate coastal and physical development planning over the area, and thus make sustainable land use decisions to protect the delicate landscape and coastal characteristics, while providing a sound risk management plan.

Development of forest fire risk map using geographical information systems and remote sensing capabilities: Ören case.

Forest fires globally cause severe losses in vegetation, soil and habitats and inevitably have direct and indirect negative environmental impacts such as deforestation, climate change and drought. According to the official records, there has been an increase of 58% in the number of the forest fires in Turkey in the last 30 years, between 1988 and 2018. Therefore, it is vital to determine the forest fire risks in the country and develop more effective methodologies to mitigate them. From this point, in the first phase, forest fire risk map of Kütahya-Ören region was prepared via the analyses of a variety of spatial data using geographical information system capabilities. The visibility analysis for the current fire towers was also performed. The results showed that very-high and high-risk, moderate-risk and low-risk zones respectively comprised 36.86%, 60.39% and 2.76% of the total study area, and 82.8% of the region was visible from the towers. In the second phase of the study, remote sensing methods were utilized for the detection of the areas burned in October 2001 in Ören-Çamdibi region, which was officially recorded as 4 hectares. The results revealed that the actual amount of the burned area was 5.6 hectares, and 83% of the burned surfaces was classified as moderate-risk areas in the fire risk map, while 17% of it was that of very-high and high-risk zones.

Assessing the effects of wind farms on soil organic carbon.

Wind energy is considered one of the cleanest and most sustainable resources among renewable energy sources. However, several negative environmental impacts can be observed, unless suitable sites are selected for the establishment of wind farms. The aim of this study is to determine the change in the soil organic carbon (SOC) stock resulting from land cover changes that were caused by wind farm establishments in the Karaburun peninsula. Within the scope of the study, remote sensing and geographic information system technologies were utilized. Maximum likelihood algorithm, one of the supervised classification techniques, was used to classify the land cover, and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) analyses were performed to determine land cover changes. The findings were correlated with the "Turkey Soil Organic Carbon Project" data. As a result, depending on the establishment of wind farms in the Karaburun Peninsula, a total decrease of 18,330.57 tons of SOC in the study area between 2000 and 2019 was determined. It should be taken into consideration that besides many other negative effects (effects on human health, effects on the ecosystem, effects on animals, etc.), land cover changes caused by wind farms may indirectly cause important problems such as climate change. Recently, this situation shows that there is an important dilemma in terms of current implementations. Wind farms are the most invested renewable energy sources and alternative energy supply to fossil fuels in terms of preventing climate change. However, the results of this study have reviewed that lack of proper approaches and methods to establish wind farms may result in various problems such as physical, chemical, and biological degradations and an increase in the amount of atmospheric carbon. Consequently, the investments in renewable energy sources should be comprehensively reevaluated in terms of current technologies, quality in the scope of environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment processes, legal regulations and national policies, long-term environmental costs, etc.

Determination of the nighttime light imagery for urban city population using DMSP-OLS methods in Istanbul.

Demography researchers and scientists have been effectively utilizing advanced technologies and methods such as geographical information systems, spatial statistics, georeferenced data, and satellite images for the last 25 years. Areal interpolation methods have also been adopted for the development of population density maps which are essential for a variety of social and environmental studies. Still, a good number of social scientists are skeptical about such technologies due to the complexity of methods and analyses. In this regard, a practical intelligent dasymetric mapping (IDM) tool that facilitates the implementation of the statistical analyses was used in this study to develop the population distribution map for the Istanbul metropolitan area via night light data provided by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) and the census records of the study area. A population density map was also produced using the choropleth mapping method to enable to make a comparison of the traditional and intelligent population density mapping implementations. According to the dasymetric population density map, 38.5% of the study area fell into sparse density category while low, moderate, high, and very high population density class percentages were found to be 9.4%, 5.5%, 2.9%, and 0.1% respectively. On the other hand, the percentages of the same population density classes ranking from sparse to very high in the choropleth map were determined to be 90.7%, 7.3%, 1.7%, 0.3%, and 0%. In the change analysis made as a result of the classification, the changes between the city area and the population were revealed. During this period, the city area and population grew. Spatial change has also been interpreted by comparing it with population changes. There appears to be a remarkable increase in both surface area and population. It is observed that the increase is especially in the south and northwest of the city. With the population increase, the number of new residential areas has increased. It is thought that behind this growth, there are different reasons besides the effect of the increase in residential areas. When the environmental awareness of people has increased more than in the past centuries, new solutions should be produced in order to be more controlled, smart, and sustainable while planning the cities of the future. Considering that the development of technology and remote sensing techniques is progressing in parallel with this technology, this study in which GIS technologies integrated with satellite images are used, it is thought that it will contribute positively to the studies in this area in terms of regular development of urban areas, increasing the opportunity to make fast and correct decisions, and creating infrastructure for studies such as monitoring and prevention of illegal housing.