Environmental Monitoring of Land-use and Land-cover Changes in Amik Plain, Turkey

Unprecedented rates of changes in land use/cover (LULC) on the local and regional scales lead to alterations of global biogeochemical cycles, and loss of productive ecosystems and biodiversity. Driving forces behind LULC changes mainly include rapid growth rates of population and consumption, lack of valuation of ecological services, poverty, ignorance of biophysical limitations, and use of ecologically incompatible technologies. One of the major ecological tragedies of the commons in the province of Hatay is the case of the loss of the Amik Lake, which reveals the urgent need for adoption of sustainable and adaptive ecosystem management strategies if escalating land use conflicts are to be avoided and environmental degradation is to be reversed in the Amik plain of the southeastern Mediterranean region of Turkey. In the 1940s, the Amik lake was started to be discharged into the Orontes river by a large-scale campaign launched to increase the area of croplands. The study quantified LULC changes and explored constraints and opportunities for future LULCs in the study area. Land use/cover changes were detected from a time series of satellite images of Landsat-MSS in 1972, Landsat-5 TM in 1987, and Landsat-7 ETM+ in 2000 using remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS). The study revealed that the increase in croplands between 1972 and 1987 took place at the expense of the irreversible losses of the Amik lake and its related wetlands of over 53 km used to provide vital ecosystem goods and services for the region. In the period of 1972 to 2000, croplands, settlements, and evergreen forests increased by 174%, 106%, and 14%, respectively, in parallel to the decreases in shrublands-orchards, and bareground. The increase in settlements occurred mostly to the detriment of croplands. The prospects for halting environmental degradation and destruction, rehabilitating damaged ecosystems, and developing sustainable ecosystem management practices need to be dealt with in light of the institutional and economic constraints facing Turkey. * Corresponding author: Phone: +90 326 2455825; Fax: +90 326 2455832; E-mail: [email protected]