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Landfill is a common solution for the final disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) in Turkey. Landfill siting is an extremely difficult task to accomplish because the site selection process depends on different factors and regulations. To ensure that an appropriate site is chosen, a systematic process should be developed and followed. Unsuccessful landfill siting is typically the result of strong public opposition. In this study, candidate sites for an appropriate landfill area in Cumra County of Konya City are determined by using the integration of geographic information systems (GIS) and multi-criteria evaluation (MCE). ArcGIS 9.0 software and its extensions were used as the GIS tool since it is able to perform suitability analysis using MCE analysis. To identify appropriate landfill areas in the Cumra district, eight input map layers including proximity to municipal and local wells and irrigational canals, distance from transportation routes and rails, distance from archaeological sites, distance from urban areas, land use/land cover, and land slope are used in constraint mapping. A final map was generated which identifies regions showing suitability for the location of the landfill site. According to the map, 6.8% of the study area is most suitable, 15.7% is suitable, 10.4% is moderately suitable, 25.8% is poorly suitable, and 41.3% is unsuitable. At the end of the analyses, three candidate sites are determined. The selection of the final MSW landfill site, however, requires further field research.

Konya City, located in the central part of Turkey, has grown and urbanized rapidly. A large amount of the water requirement of Konya City is supplied from groundwater. The quality of this groundwater was determined by taking samples from 177 of the wells within the study area. The purposes of this investigation were (1) to provide an overview of present groundwater quality and (2) to determine spatial distribution of groundwater quality parameters such as pH, electrical conductivity, Cl-, SO4(-2), hardness, and NO3- concentrations, and (3) to map groundwater quality in the study area by using GIS and Geostatistics techniques. ArcGIS 9.0 and ArcGIS Geostatistical Analyst were used for generation of various thematic maps and ArcGIS Spatial Analyst to produce the final groundwater quality map. An interpolation technique, ordinary kriging, was used to obtain the spatial distribution of groundwater quality parameters. The final map shows that the southwest of the city has optimum groundwater quality, and, in general, the groundwater quality decreases south to north of the city; 5.03% (21.51 km2) of the total study area is classified to be at the optimum groundwater quality level.

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