Ramsar Convention (RC) is the first of modern intergovernmental agreement on the conscious use and conservation of natural resources. It provides a platform for contracting parties working together to develop the best available data, advice, and policy recommendations to increase awareness of the benefits of wetlands in nature and society. Turkey became a party of the RC in 1994, and in the years 1994 to 2013, 14 wetlands that reached the Ramsar criteria were recognized as Ramsar sites (RS). With this study, all inland RS in Turkey from 1985 to 2020 were examined, and changes in the water surface areas were evaluated on the GEE cloud computing platform using Landsat satellite images and the NDWI index. The closest meteorological station data to each RS were evaluated and associated with the surface area changes. The reasons for the changes in these areas, besides the meteorological effects, have been scrutinized using management plans and publications. As a result, inland wetlands decreased at different rates from 1985 to 2020, with a total loss of 31.38% and 21571.0 ha for the spring months. Since the designation dates of RS, the total amount of water surface area reduction was 27.35 %, constituting 17,758.90 ha.
Water resources in the world are becoming scarce due to both natural climatic conditions under the effect of climate change and human-induced activities. The population is rising day-by-day leading to a steady decrease in water resources, which in turn, highly disturbs the natural ecological functions of the vulnerable systems. Lakes can be addressed as important water bodies that are under the effect of shrinkage in different parts of the world, and if no remedial measures are taken, they will disappear in the near future. Lake Burdur in Turkey is among such lakes that lose its water volume over time. This study was performed via a group of interdisciplinary scientists to analyze the spatial and temporal changes in the water surface area in the long-term and in the short-term (2016-2020) with the aim of putting forth the areal changes. Remote sensing technology was utilized for this purpose. Landsat imagery and Sentinel 2 images were utilized for the long and short-term assessments, respectively. Meteorological conditions during the inspection terms were obtained from the State Meteorological Service to determine the dominating reason(s) of area changes over time. Natural conditions and anthropogenic activities are linked with the findings. Resultantly, water withdrawals from the dams and reservoirs built in the region and from the streams feeding the lake for irrigation purposes during the dry season representing the human-induced activities dominate over the natural causes of climate change as is the case in most of the water bodies of the world. This outcome was also confirmed by a detailed analysis of the agricultural areas in the basin through satellite images and by field trips made at site.
<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> A flood, one of the most devastating natural disasters in the world, occurs when water inundates land that's normally dry. Although floods can develop in many ways, river floods (i.e. overflow by rivers or river banks) are the most common. Turkey is one of the flood-affected countries with its 20 main basins in 8 regions. One of the most aggrieved basins in Turkey is the Maritsa river basin in in Eastern Balkans, which also contains the natural border regions with Greece and Bulgaria. 65% of the Maritsa River basin, which originates from the Rila Mountains and joins the Arda and Tundzha rivers, is located in Bulgaria. When the melting snow flow or precipitation in the basin increases, the Maritsa River overflows from the slopes to the Edirne Plain and from time to time exceeds the capacity of the bed, causing floods. On the other hand, since the water level in the dams and reservoirs was kept at the highest level for production purposes, the flood repeat interval increased in the region, since 2000s. Today, it is possible to monitor and evaluate the damages of flood by obtaining very reliable information with space technology. Especially, microwave SAR images that can penetrate clouds, are of great importance in flood mapping because they provide immediate information on the extent of inundation and support the evaluation of property and environmental damages. In this study, rapid flood risk assessment in the region was performed using Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) time series images, and calibrated Sentinel 1 SAR images produced on Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform for 2015-2018 period. GEE is a cloud-based platform that facilitates access to high-performance computing resources to handle very large geographic data sets. The results were compared and verified using meteorological data, riverbed flow data, and digital media news. The results showed that the most affected areas were consistent with the highest measured flow rates and the magnitude of flood damages caused by two main causes in the basin (i.e. opening of shutters in Bulgarian dams or local excessive rainfall) was very different (approximately 8 times larger) from each other.</p>
Remote sensing that is a low cost data source capable of making temporal observations has more advantages than the traditional methods to obtain land-use/cover change maps. In this study, temporal land-use/cover change of surface water bodies in Konya Closed Basin was evaluated via Landsat satellite images for the past 30 years. The basin, located in Central Anatolia Region of Turkey, faces water scarcity problems; however, wet agricultural activities are still favoured and practiced. Therefore, water resources are becoming more important than ever; public complains about long-lasting drought conditions and on lessening of surface water resources. There are 16 surface water bodies, and 3 of them are lakes; whereas the rest are wetlands of importance. Two of them are Ramsar sites. Results indicate that the surface area of the water bodies in Konya Closed Basin declined by approximately 23.5% within the inspection years. One of the important wetlands of the basin named as Akgol Wetland has almost lost its water surface by 96% at the same time interval, and is in danger of extinction. Thus, this vulnerable wetland has been focused on in the study. The decrease of water surface in the wetland is matched with the meteorological conditions.
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