Deforestation in the arid and semiarid regions was followed by the formation of anthropogenic forests to anthropogenic steppes. Where degradation continues, steppes can turn into "anthropogenic deserts" across a wide range of landform features: plains, plateaus, or rugged mountains and hills (Boydak, 1997;Boydak and Çalışkan, 2015). Soils in most of these barren lands were compacted by over 50 years of intensive grazing accompanied by topsoil loss caused by water and wind erosion. Despite centuries of human activity, ninety percent of the forests in Turkey are 'native' (not planted) in origin and contain over 450 tree and shrub species (Mayer and Aksoy, 1998;Çolak and Rotherham, 2006).The Anatolian landscape was composed of 60%-70% forest and 10%-15% steppe 4000 years ago (Davis, 1965(Davis, -1988. The OGM (2014) stated that overgrazing, overcutting, fires, agriculture clearing, wars, and other misuse of the land have decreased the forest area to 26% while increasing the steppe area to 24% (Mayer and Aksoy, 1998;Çolak and Rotherham, 2006), but Uslu (1959) claimed that about half of the steppes in Central Anatolia are "anthropogenic. " Despite these differences, it is probable that up to half of the steppes in the Central Anatolia region possess "anthropogenic" characteristics Çalışkan, 2014, 2015).Forestlands in Turkey are thought to have declined from 50 million ha (Ürgenç, 1998) prior to human settlement to 21.7 million ha by 2012 (Boydak and Çalışkan, 2014). The Turkish Forest Service has afforested 3.5 million ha of land since 1945 mainly in the arid and semiarid regions, thereby enlarging the country's forest area. According to the 2014 report by the Turkish Ministry of Forest and Water Affairs, Turkey's forest area increased by about 1.5 million ha from 1972 to 2012. On the other hand, the current annual raw wood material consumption was about 40.7 million m 3 in 2014 (Boydak and Çalışkan, 2014).Turkey is one of the major floral regions in the world, with more than 12,000 taxa of herbaceous and woody species, of which 3500 species are endemic (Ekim et al., 2000). Turkey contains three important main vegetation zones and intersections of these zones: Euro-Siberian, Irano-Turanian, and Mediterranean vegetation zones (Figure 1). The rich vegetation in Turkey is because of its geographic location and the different climate and subclimate types. Turkey is located in the transition of temperate and tropical climates, containing the Asian continental and Eastern Mediterranean zones (Oliver, 1983;Boydak et al., 1995). The many climate and
